Role models and morality plays

His fans say "He's a great golfer--his personal life is his business." But...as a multi-million dollar investment for well-known companies and a role model for kids taking up the game, is that greatness still intact, still genuine? Especially as the saturation coverage of his carefully-scripted return gave way to Phil Mickelson overcoming both the competition and concern about the health of his wife and his mother.

As a kid, my life was about sports. Everything...all the time. My first job was writing sports at a daily paper in Wisconsin. Perhaps, I thought, a first step toward Sports Illustrated, then my guiding light to great sports writing. Sports gave way to the realities of life. And my years-ago passion for sports has evolved to a different level, as even SI finds it can't avoid devoting space to such topics as: loaded guns in locker rooms, ex-White House spokesmen designing apologies for wayward sports figures and various overpaid athletes sending very private photos of themselves to the world.

For me, a childhood world of sports has drifted into an uncomfortable mismash of misplaced priorities--mostly over money--like a 96-team Big Dance. Which is why the Masters was really a morality play...with the perfect ending at the final curtain.