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All that stood between Martin Laird and victory at Bay Hill were two putts from just inside 90 feet on the 18th hole, which didn’t seem all that long considering what he already had been through Sunday.

First came a stunning collapse that took him from a three-shot lead to a three-shot deficit in a span of seven holes. He was three shots behind when he walked off the 14th green, two shots ahead as he headed to the 17th tee.

Laird knocked the first putt up to 3½ feet, then jabbed his fist when he rolled in the par putt to win the Arnold Palmer Invitational.

“That was a hell of a day,” Laird said. “That was a tough fight out there. It was a battle out there, but you know, it makes it even sweeter at the end when I got this trophy.”

In the toughest final round on the PGA Tour this year, Laird was strong at the end with two birdies and two clutch pars to close with a 3-over 75, the highest final round by a winner in the 33-year history at Bay Hill.

That two-putt par on the 18th was just enough for a one-shot victory over hard-luck Steve Marino, who lost three shots on two plugged lies in bunkers over the last four holes. Marino followed a double bogey on the par-3 17th with an all-or-nothing shot over the water at the flag to 8 feet on the last hole for birdie and a 72.

“You just cannot afford to [waste] shots in the final round — really, at any point in the tournament — if you want to win,” Marino said after his third close call this year. “Unfortunately on 17, that’s exactly what I did. It came back to bite me.”

Laird, a 28-year-old from Scotland who came to America to play college golf and never left, became the first European to win at Bay Hill. He now heads off to the Masters for the first major of the year, having felt like he just won one.

Considering all the calamity, it felt as though the U.S. Open have moved from June to March. No one in the last three groups broke par, and those six players were a combined 19-over par.

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By Gene Wojciechowski

ORLANDO, Fla. — In the time it takes Kevin Na to hit a putt you can watch Seasons 1-6 of “Lost.” You can see your fingernails grow. You can retrace the voyages of Magellan.

I don’t know if Na is the slowest player in professional golf, but according to one PGA Tour rules official I spoke with Thursday, he’s in the Final Four of pokiness. Na is so slow that snails ask if they can play through.

Time doesn’t stand still when Na plays; it goes backward. The only thing brief about him is his last name.

If the tour is wondering why viewers sometimes nod off during telecasts, or why you can measure round times with sundials, Na is Exhibit A. And if the tour doesn’t do something about him — and others like him — you’re going to have to buy a day/night pass to watch a tournament.

I spent a numbing 4 hours and 46 minutes following the threesome of Na, Chad Campbell and Paul Goydos during the first round of the Arnold Palmer Invitational. They teed off at 7:52 a.m. and completed their round at 12:38 p.m. At 12:39 I chugged battery acid.

Only one threesome teed off before them — not that we ever saw it. Na & Co. never had to wait to hit a shot, were never slowed by any official rulings and had only one instance when a player (Goydos) dunked a shot in the water and had to drop. And it still took nearly FIVE HOURS!

It’s not that the tour isn’t aware it has a pace-of-play issue. Every pro on the Bay Hill driving range knows that Na moves slower than frozen maple syrup. And he isn’t the only guy who is speed-challenged.

You could build an acropolis in the time it takes J.B. Holmes to finish a round of golf. Webb Simpson and Ben Crane aren’t much better. And there others (Campbell had his moments Thursday) who play as if they’re being paid by the hour.

“We talk about it every [players] meeting,” said tour veteran Pat Perez. “Every meeting we talk about pace of play and we talk about course setup. But it never changes. It’s a waste of time to talk about it. People aren’t going to change their routine. We’re playing for millions of dollars a week out here. Guys are not going to change their routine just to finish. In their mind, they’re in no hurry.”

Perez plays as if his golf shoes are on fire. He sees ball. He hits ball.

Na sees ball and then contemplates the meaning of life. No golf shot deserves that much attention.

I kept a stopwatch on each of the 74 shots he hit Thursday. I wouldn’t start the clock until he got his yardage and pulled a club from his bag for tee shots, iron shots or wedge shots. And I wouldn’t press the start button until it was Na’s turn to putt and everyone else had marked his ball or finished out.

There’s no getting around it though: Na is sloooooooow. By the time the Na threesome reached the eighth tee box, a rules official was there waiting for them.

“Hey, guys, a hole’s opened up,” said the official. “You’re 8 minutes over [the accepted pace of play].”

Gee, what a surprise that an official warning was issued. Na isn’t noticeably slower than his partners on most shots — usually something in the 20-30-second range. It’s when his cleats touch the greens that Na pulls the parachute on his pace of play.

Should it take 1 minute and 28 seconds to hit a single putt? It does if you’re Na. To watch Na and his caddie, Kenny Harms, obsess over a putt is to watch two bumblebees circle a flower stem.

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The PGA Tour is considering a change to the end of its season in which players who don’t make the FedEx Cup playoffs would compete for their cards in a series of tournaments against top Nationwide Tour players.

PGA Tour spokesman Ty Votaw confirmed the policy board has given preliminary approval to the concept, although it is in the early stages of discussion. The tour began informing players by memo late Monday afternoon.

Another change being contemplated is Q-school at the end of the year providing access only to the Nationwide Tour.

“There are still a number of steps,” Votaw said.

The tour has been looking at ways to strengthen the Nationwide Tour, its developmental circuit. It is looking for a new umbrella sponsor, because Nationwide has said it would not renew its contract after 2012.

Under the preliminary plan, the top 125 on the FedEx Cup standings after the Wyndham Championship would advance to the playoffs and compete for $35 million in bonus money, with $10 million for the winner.

Those who don’t make the top 125 would have the option of playing a series of three tournaments along with top Nationwide Tour players. Those tournaments also would have a points structure, and it would determine who gets PGA Tour cards the following season.

Among the numbers being mentioned for the three-tournament series is 75 players from the FedEx Cup standings and the top 50 players from the Nationwide Tour money list, with the top 50 players from that series earning their cards.

“The number from the Nationwide that goes to the three-tournament series hasn’t been determined yet,” Votaw said. “And the question of how many cards has not been, either.”

If the plan goes through, that means players could no longer go straight from Q-school to the PGA Tour. If a player doesn’t make the FedEx Cup playoffs and doesn’t make it through the three-tournament series, he still could compete the following year on limited status as a past champion or depending on how high he finished beyond the top 125. That part wouldn’t change.

The PGA Tour over the past several years has been awarding more cards through the Nationwide Tour money list than those who make it through six rounds of Q-school. It feels players are more prepared for the big leagues after going through an entire season of traveling and trying to make cuts in the minors.

Such a change, however, would eliminate dreams of long shots who go make it through Q-school, some of them fresh out of college, others who have toiled through mini-tours.

J.B. Holmes and Dustin Johnson are among those who went straight from college and made it through Q-school, then won in their rookie season. A year ago, Rickie Fowler went from Q-school to a spot on the Ryder Cup team.

Some tour officials feel those players are exceptions, and that the quality of fields would be strengthened.

It also would add a layer of drama to the end of the year — PGA Tour players who struggled and Nationwide Tour players who performed well, meeting in a cutthroat series of events.

Still to be determined is how the Fall Series, which typically is held after the FedEx Cup, would be effected.

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By Bob Harig
All these years later, it is interesting to note that Nick Faldo bogeyed the 11th hole at Augusta National during all four rounds of the 1989 Masters.

His 5 there during a rainy final round dropped him five strokes back of the lead, but he rallied for a 65 that put him in a memorable playoff with Scott Hoch — one that he seemed hopelessly out of when his approach to the first playoff hole, No. 10, found a bunker.

Hoch was on the green with a birdie putt that ran 2 feet by the hole, and Faldo was helpless as he blasted out and made a bogey 5. Hoch had a simple par putt for the win — and he missed.

It was a major championship gaffe, as the ball didn’t even hit the hole.

More than two decades later, Hoch has come to terms with his brush with immortality. Now 55, he won 11 times on the PGA Tour, played on two U.S. Ryder Cup teams and earned nearly $20 million.

But the botched putt remains his legacy. For a time, the phrase, “Hoch as in choke” was derisively used to describe him, although he went on to win eight of his titles after that Masters and climbed to as high as 11th in the world in 1997.

“It was a great experience, but you would have liked to have finished it off better than that,” Hoch said. “I don’t think about it anymore, except when someone brings it up. But for a while there, you can’t help it. You strive to win major tournaments… I certainly would have loved to win that but I didn’t.”
Faldo won the first of his green jackets on the next hole by rolling in a 30-foot birdie putt. It was the second of his six major championships.

The Englishman had overcome a 77 in the third round, but understandably what is most remembered is Hoch’s miss.

“What happened was I lined it up left. That’s what I figure,” Hoch said. “I’ve seen [the replays.] I’ve seen it from behind, most of the pictures. It felt fine, the stroke felt fine. I wanted to put it just inside the hole. I just lined up wrong. I felt comfortable.

“People were saying about me not hurrying up and putting it the first time, but the same thing happened on 17 tee. I wasn’t going to have it happen again. I was standing over the putt, thinking ‘Man, I’m going to win the Masters.’ And that was the wrong thing to think about. And I kind of forgot what I had read in the putt. That’s when I thought I have to get my head straight, backed off and looked at it again and went and putted.

“I was perfectly ready, it was the right thing, it was the right thing to do at the time. I just didn’t make it. I would have been really ticked off at myself if I had putted the first time with the wrong thoughts in my head and to have missed it. It would have driven me crazy. At the time I did the right thing and got my mind where I needed to make the putt and I just didn’t.”

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Each week in the PGA Tour season, our panel of experts will share their insights into which players fit the criteria for our four categories below: Birdie Buster, Horse for the Course, Super Sleeper and Winner.

This week’s tournament: The Transitions Championship.

Want another opinion? Check out ESPN.com’s FOREcaster page.

ESPN.com golf writer Bob Harig

Horse for the Course: K.J. Choi
A two-time winner at Innisbrook, Choi also has two other top-10s. He was second to Jim Furyk a year ago.

Birdie Buster: Nick Watney
The winner at Doral on Sunday, Watney is off to a strong start this season, having yet to finish out of the top 10 in any event. And he’s going to keep right on going, this week at Innisbrook and next week at Bay Hill.

Super Sleeper: Sergio Garcia
Hard to believe that Garcia is making his first PGA Tour appearance 11 weeks into the season. He’s never cracked the top 40 in two previous showings at Innisbrook. It is just his fourth start of the year, the last coming more than a month ago in Dubai, where he tied for 20th.

Winner: Padraig Harrington
The Irishman was near the lead Sunday before a triple-bogey on the third hole but is due for a PGA Tour victory. He celebrates St. Patrick’s Day in the States and then heads back home to Ireland with a win.

ESPN.com senior golf editor Kevin Maguire

Horse for the Course: Padraig Harrington
After not cracking the top 30 in his first three PGA Tour starts of the year, the Irishman finished T-10 at Doral last week. Toss in his T-8 finish in his only appearance at Innisbrook in 2010 and it could be a formula for success.

Birdie Buster: Justin Rose
The Englishman has never finished worse than a tie for 30th at the Transitions Championship in five appearances and that includes three top-25s.

Super Sleeper: Sean O’Hair
He hasn’t shown much form of late, but he returns to a place where he won back in 2008. Let’s hope he’s channeling that year and not the past two at the Copperhead course, where he MC’d both times.

Winner: Nick Watney
Sure, I could go the “hot hand” route for picking Watney, but in the five previous times he’s played at Innisbrook, he’s improved every year. T-58, T-48, T-23, T-12 and solo fourth in 2010. That’s what you call … trending up.

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By Gene Wojciechowski

DORAL, Fla. — The top three players on the planet not only are here in the same tournament — the WGC-Cadillac Championship — but on Thursday (and again on Friday) were in the same threesome. This happens about as often as Charlie Sheen is named CBS Employee of the Month.

So excited were the galleries about the marquee pairing of Martin Kaymer, Lee Westwoodand Luke Donald that almost fives of people gathered around the seventh green as they approached the hole. You could have placed a sofa and ottoman there, and not bothered anybody.

I counted: There were 58 fans around the green. Fifty-eight. Joe’s Stone Crab gets longer lines.

Meanwhile, the threesome of Graeme McDowell, Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson, ranked 4, 5 and 6 in the world, attracted almost all of the attention. Fans gathered around the tee box areas, lined most of the fairways and made their presence known at the greens. Compared to the sparse numbers following Kaymer & Co., this was a Fat Tuesday crowd in the French Quarter.

I mentioned this to Westwood in the locker room after darkness cut short Thursday’s play. Said that I was a little surprised about the small size of the Kaymer, Westwood and Donald galleries.

“Really?” he said, smiling.

“You’re not?” I said.

“Not here.”

“But it’s still 1, 2 and 3 in the world.”

“And it’s still from Germany, England and England.”

“So I’m being naive about this?”

“Yes.”

Whatever. No. 1 Kaymer, No. 2 Westwood and No. 3 Donald deserved better than the 58 people who saw them on the seventh hole. It was so quiet that the greenside marshals didn’t even bother to raise their arms for silence when the threesome putted.

Kaymer and Donald are 5-under after 10 holes, tied for second and two strokes off the lead. Westwood is 4-under and tied for ninth.

“Well, I had a fantastic start with three birdies, and then I played very, very solid golf,” Kaymer said.

Too bad hardly anyone saw it.

I get it: Tiger and Phil move the viewership needle. And McDowell is the defending U.S. Open champion and Ryder Cup conqueror. But none of them played better than the world’s Nos. 1-3.

Mickelson is at 2-under, and Woods and McDowell are at 1-under. Not bad. But also, not Kaymer or Donald good.

There are worse things than having Woods and Lefty suck all the attention out of the place. It allowed Kaymer, Westwood and Donald to go about their business without dealing with crowd distractions.

But it would have been nice for someone to realize how rare these pairings are. Sure, it happened in February at Dubai, but before that, we’re talking the first two days of the 2008 U.S. Open.

Then again, I’m in the minority on this.

How do I know this?

“If I was out there,” someone said, “I’d be out there watching Tiger.”

The someone was named Westwood.

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DORAL, Fla. — It had almost become a running joke between them, the fact that Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson were rarely put together during the opening rounds of PGA Tour events, despite a supposedly random pairings process.

This week, the tour is making no secret of its desire to put together marquee groupings during the first rounds of the WGC-Cadillac Championship.

Woods and Mickelson, ranked fifth and sixth, respectively, will play with reigning U.S. Open champion Graeme McDowell, ranked fourth. They will start on Thursday at 11:51 a.m. ET from Doral’s 10th tee, and then Friday at 12:54 p.m. from No. 1.

It will be just the 27th time since the beginning of Woods’ first full season as a pro in 1997 that he and Mickelson have played together during any round on the PGA Tour. Their last pairing came during the final round of last year’s BMW Championship.

For this World Golf Championship event, the top 21 players in the world have been grouped according to the rankings. No. 1 Martin Kaymer, No. 2 Lee Westwood and No. 3 Luke Donaldmake up a group. No. 7 Paul Casey, No. 8 Rory McIlroy and No. 9 Steve Stricker are in another.

Despite being at or near the top of the rankings for most of the past decade, Woods and Mickelson are almost never grouped together to start a tournament.

The last time it occurred during a non-major championship was at the 2007 Deutsche Bank Championship, where the pairings were based on FedEx Cup points. Prior to that, they were paired at the 2002 Tour Championship, which was based on the money list.

The only time a “random” first-round grouping of Woods and Mickelson occurred was at the 1998 Nissan Open at Valencia in Los Angeles.

Woods and Mickelson were involved in a couple of classic duels at Doral’s TPC Blue Monster before the tournament here became a World Golf Championship event.

In 2005, Woods shot a final-round 66 to overtake Mickelson for the victory. A year later, they were grouped together in the third round and Woods went on to win that tournament.

Woods won the first WGC event here in 2007 and Mickelson won the 2009 title at Doral.

During their previous 26 rounds together, they each have bettered the other 11 times, with four ties.

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By Richard Durrett

DALLAS — Hall of Famer Lee Trevino still believes Tiger Woods will surpass Jack Nicklaus’ record for major victories, but says Woods still has work to do to find his game again.

“My suggestion to Tiger Woods, which I don’t know will ever happen, is he’s got to look at the film from when he started winning all those tournaments and go right back to what he was doing and get rid of all these people,” the 71-year-old Trevino, a Dallas native, said Thursday at a luncheon to promote the HP Byron Nelson Championship on May 23-29 at The TPC Four Seasons Resort and Club Las Colinas in Irving, Texas.

By “people,” Trevino meant instructors. Trevino said that once Woods “gets his mindset straight and quits messing with all these instructors” that his winning form will return.

Woods, 35, has 14 major championships and needs five more to break Nicklaus’ record.

Lanny Wadkins, who appeared with Trevino at the luncheon, puts Woods’ chances of getting past Nicklaus at 50-50. Wadkins, 61, said Nicklaus faced better competition than Woods, noting that Nicklaus beat Trevino, Arnold Palmer,Gary Player, Billy Casper, Tom Watson, Seve Ballesteros, Tom Weiskopf, Johnny Miller and other top players.

“Everybody he beat were Hall of Famers,” Wadkins said. “The best tournaments you talk about with Tiger were a playoff with Rocco Mediate and Bob May. Lee beat Nicklaus in a U.S. Open 18-hole playoff. The quality of people he’s beaten compared to Jack beat, there’s no comparison.

“The thing that’s happening now is all these kids are finding their game. This whole next generation looks very impressive, and so he’s all of a sudden going to have more competition now to get to his 18 than he’s had in his first 14, in my opinion.”

Woods has won four Masters (1997, 2001, 2002, 2005), four PGA Championships (1999, 2000, 2006, 2007), three British Open titles (2000, 2005, 2006) and three U.S. Opens (2000, 2002, 2008). His last PGA Tour win was the BMW Championship in September 2009, two months before the car accident outside his home that has altered his life on and off the course.

Trevino said Woods should have owned up to what happened as soon as the accident occurred.

Last May, Hank Haney announced on his website he had informed Woods he was no longer his golf coach. Woods is now working with instructor Sean Foley, a partnership that began at last year’s PGA Championship.

Trevino remains confident that the golf world will see a resurgent Woods soon.

“He’ll find his game,” Trevino said. “He’s too good a player. He’s got desire. He hasn’t lost that yet. He just got off the road a little bit and it’s going to take him a little while to get his head on straight, but he’s Tiger Woods. He hasn’t lost the ability to play. He might not be as intimidating as he was.”

Nicklaus, speaking to reporters Wednesday at the Honda Classic, said his old instructor, Jack Grout, never set foot on a practice range. Nicklaus said Grout gave his thoughts on what to work on during practice, but that it was up to Nicklaus to execute them.

Trevino and Wadkins entertained a group of Salesmanship Club members during a 30-minute Q&A on Thursday. The event was held at J. Erik Jonsson Community School in Oak Cliff, a school that is supported by the Salesmanship Club, which runs the Nelson. The tournament has given more to charity than any other PGA Tour event.

The two Hall of Famers — who have 50 PGA Tour wins, seven major victories and 14 Ryder Cup appearances between them — talked about what life was like when they played the tour and how they feel about the issues facing the game today.

Trevino feels strongly that the PGA Tour should mandate that players compete in every tournament at least once every three years. That’s similar to the LPGA, which makes its players compete in a tournament at least once every four years.

“I tried to get that done in 1974,” Trevino said. “How can you go to a sponsor and want them to put up $20 million for three years and he can’t tell you who’s coming? I don’t know if I’d do that.”

Trevino thinks the only way it would happen is if all the sponsors got together and forced the tour to make it mandatory.

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To the surprise of no one who follows the sport week-to-week, the top of this week’s Official World Golf Rankings have a distinctly un-American flavor.

The new king is 26-year-old defending PGA champion Martin Kaymer. It’s an ascension that feels like the rankings now accurately reflect what has been true for several months: that the German is undoubtedly, right now, the best player in the world. Kaymer has five wins — including that major — on the PGA and European Tours since the beginning of 2010. No one else has more than three in that span on the world’s two marquee circuits.

At just about 26 years and 2 months, Kaymer is the second-youngest player to ever sit atop the rankings, trailing only Tiger Woods, who was 21 years, 5 months when he first reached No. 1 back in 1997. He’s the second German player to ever reach No. 1, too;Bernhard Langer held the spot for the first three weeks the rankings existed back in 1986.

In other European overlord news, Luke Donald never trailed in any match at the WGC-Accenture Match Play en route to victory and the world No. 3 ranking. The deepest any of Donald’s matches were all square was just 10 holes. None of Donald’s matches even reached the 18th hole.

Not only that, but Graeme McDowell eclipsed Tiger Woods in the rankings — meaning that Nos. 1-4 in the world all now belong to European players. The last time that happened (March 1992), the first George Bush was still in office, Barry Bonds played for the Pittsburgh Pirates and Kaymer was 7 years old.

On the other side of the spectrum, Woods has ventured into territory not seen since his historic 1997 Masters victory. This is the first time Tiger has been outside the top four in the world rankings since May, 1997, when he was fifth for the four weeks immediately following his victory at Augusta.

For about 15 years, any evaluations of American golf have been weighted heavily by Woods, so claiming the American touring pros are struggling at a time when Tiger isn’t at his best certainly isn’t unprecedented. But for all the clamor in the PGA Tour’s marketing campaign regarding their next generation of stars, the current rankings certainly do not reflect positively on Americans, specifically the younger ones.

Consider this: There is no American player younger than 32 currently ranked in the top 10 in the world. At 32, Matt Kuchar is the youngest American who is No. 10 this week. Of the top 30 players in the world, only nine are American. Of those nine, only three are younger than 30: Dustin Johnson (14th), Hunter Mahan (19th), and Rickie Fowler (30th).

Compare that to the Europeans — the No. 1 (Kaymer), No. 3 (Donald), No. 4 (Graeme McDowell), No. 7 (Paul Casey), and No. 8 (Rory McIlroy) are all 33 or younger. There are 13 Europeans currently ranked in the top 30. European Tour players won three of the four major championships in 2010, and the only American to win one last year is on the wrong side of 40.

In some eyes, this is an awful downswing for American golf, decreasing interest in the sport stateside. In other eyes, it’s a golden era for the European game, and a sign of the strong global balance and reach of this truly international sport. Both are probably true.

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