Like most of a fascinated sports world, I waited patiently for Tiger Woods to grant his post-Bay Hill victory interview on The Golf Channel on Monday. It took him about 15 seconds to get to Steve Sands for the greenside chat, and I imagine that's because he told Sands: "Hang on, Sandsy. Let me slip on this giant foam finger that reads 'I'M NUMBER ONE,' flash it toward the haters, the press and the haters in the press and I'll get right to you."

Holy smokes. Tiger Woods just accomplished one of the greatest feats of his career.

Right next to winning four consecutive majors from 2000-01, right next to winning six consecutive U.S. Junior Amateurs and U.S. Amateurs, right next to 77 PGA Tour wins by age 37, I'll put "The Long Climb Back" on Tiger's all-time ledger. By winning at Bay Hill on Monday, Tiger Woods is No. 1 in the world again – for the first time since October 2010, for the first time since falling to No. 58 in the world, and for the first time since his cloak of

Kevin Streelman's 4-under 67 in the final round gave him his first PGA Tour victory. (AP)

What were we, a golf-loving nation, to do with ourselves when a week on the PGA Tour unfolds without a Rory McIlroy walk-off, without a Rory McIlroy apology, without a Tiger Woods butt-whuppin' of the field? Heck, even Johnny Miller took the week off when the Tour swung thru Innisbrook Resort for the Tampa Bay Championship.

Thanks, then, to Kevin Streelman, who reminded us that it's not always about Nike money, or glitzy win totals, or global fame. Sometimes it's about a running down a dream.

In his 153rd PGA Tour start, winless, bereft of star power, riches or glory, Streelman played damn inspiring golf at a brutal Copperhead course. In the process, he locked down his first Tour win, impressed anyone who wants to know what seizing a golf moment looks like and even caused his wife to shed a few tears of long-waited joy.

On Sunday, knowing that Boo Weekley's 8-under total was burning on the leader board, a daunting number on a daunting golf course, Streelman got to 10-under

Well, if Tiger Woods is going to putt like that, no fair.

Like replays on a loop from earlier in his career, golf balls obediently and promptly disappeared from view when Tiger pulled back his putter, time and time again around Doral Golf Resort and Spa this past weekend. The result was another Tiger 54-hole lead, another Tiger march to victory, a 76th PGA Tour title, a fifth win in his last 19 starts and the continued staggering statistic that his career win percentage is 27 percent, best in history by a mile. Tiger Woods holds the Gene Sarazen Cup after winning the Cadillac Championship. (AP)

But this one was different than the previous four wins over the last year. This one was The Return of the Flatstick.

This is the thing, golf fans. This is the thing that's been missing for nearly a half-decade now, ever since his aura of invincibility was punctured, and his knees started breaking down, and he switched swing coaches yet again. His putter disappeared for years, spoken about in the hushed reverence one reserves for the things gone by, for beauty lost,

Rory McIlroy bailed out of the Honda Classic midway through the second round. (Getty Images)

Congratulations to Michael Thompson, who beat a top field at the Honda Classic for the 27-year-old's first PGA Tour win, and now officially becomes, "Oh, That Guy Who Won The Week Rory McIlroy Walked Off The Golf Course Because He's Melting Down – Er, Uh – Because Of A Painful Wisdom Tooth."

Pretty sure Thompson couldn't care less about the shaggy-haired Ulsterman's display of mental weakness in Friday's second round. After all, Thompson achieved a lifelong dream by shooting a hard-earned 69 at the tough PGA National for a two-stroke win over a recharged Geoff Ogilvy. But for the rest of us? The Honda Classic will always be "Rory's Regression" more than "Thompson's Title."

Even Jack Nicklaus' enjoyable turn in the NBC booth with Dan Hicks and Johnny Miller centered on the mystery of McIlroy.

A little more than six months ago, McIlroy was kissing a Wanamaker Trophy after a second major championship at the age of 23, and by eight strokes at the 2012 PGA Championship, too – the

Matt Kuchar beat Hunter Mahan 2 and 1 to win the Match Play Championship. (Getty Images)

Nice win at the World Golf Championships Accenture Match Play for Matt Kuchar, who surely becomes the first player to win a WGC event while wearing the same mittens worn by Admiral Richard Byrd in his 1928 Antarctic expedition.

Holy oven mitts, Kooch. The brisk wind that ripped through Arizona for much of the week – even bringing the celebrated snow that cancelled Wednesday's first round – wouldn't seem to favor a Southern boy who was schooled at sweltering Georgia Tech and calls humid St. Simon's Island, Ga., home. But Kuchar's 2-and-1 win over a game Hunter Mahan, who defended his 2012 Match Play title all the way to the championship match, proved that Kuchar can get 'er done in climes both sunny (last year's Players Championship) and chilly – and that the smiling Kuchar burns with an assassin's edge behind those deceivingly friendly pearly whites.

Kuchar's run included taking out the higher-seeded Sergio Garcia (2 and 1) in the round of 32, and kneecapping the confident

John Merrick kisses the winner's trophy after winning the Northern Trust Open. (AP)

It is with a heavy heart that those of us who love the West Coast Swing, who love the crashing waves behind the seventh green at Pebble Beach, the hang gliders off the 14th green at Torrey Pines and the sound of the word "kikuya" whispered by a reverential Jim Nantz at Riviera, bid farewell to golf in the Pacific time zone.

No, the World Golf Championships Match Play starting Wednesday at Dove Mountain does not count as "West Coast Swing." That's the "Made for TV Sonoran Desert Swing." No Pacific Ocean seen, heard or felt? No West Coast Swing.

If it's got to end, however, it ended in one of the finest ways imaginable: on the 10th hole at Riviera Country Club, a vexing, tempting, wrenching, deceiving 295-yard stretch of Pacific Palisades real estate.

When John Merrick, the former L.A. Open ticket-buyer as a youngster who was born and raised in Long Beach and schooled at UCLA, fought back tears after his first PGA Tour win – a playoff sealed on the 10th hole over Charlie

Brandt Snedeker shot a final-round 65 to win at Pebble Beach. (AP)

Tiger … Rory … Sneds?

While that sentence sounds like Entry A in the "One of These Things Is Not Like the Other" contest, we may need to start re-evaluating our estimation of one Brandt Snedeker, age 32, hometown of Nashville, Tenn. No, Snedeker hasn't won a major championship. But what he has done is seal the deal as hottest player on Earth since last August, and that's not even a question.

On Sunday, on one of those reverie-inducing, blue-sky Pebble Beach days in which Mother Nature reminded us of the old Ronald Reagan line, "If the Pilgrims landed in California, the East would still be wilderness," Snedeker played golf as beautiful as his surroundings.

By carving out a Sunday 65 at the famed links, and by sealing a two-stroke win over Chris Kirk, Snedeker left Pebble Beach with the following résumé:

Nine starts since last August. Two wins, including the $11.4 million payday at the Tour Championship and accompanying FedEx Cup title. Six of those nine starts resulted in

Phil Mickelson finished within two strokes of a PGA Tour scoring record. (AP)

You know who sucks? Know-it-all golf writers, that's who.

I read this one column last week, and the blowhard scribe was coming after Phil Mickelson because of his so-so play in his first two starts of 2013. The guy wrote:

"Now, if things don't go his way in Phoenix, he will arrive at Pebble Beach marking the one-year anniversary since his last win. He also was a non-factor in the final three majors of 2012. Lefty has now gone 20 starts since his last win, and is 42 years old. As the kids would tweet: Just sayin'."

Phil probably read that online column while discussing carried interest and Cayman Island tax shelters with his accountant one morning over breakfast last week in Phoenix, dabbed a napkin at the corners of his mouth after a bite of a lobster omelet, and said: "Watch me lay waste to this idiot."

Here's what followed: a damn-near 59 (he settled for a lip-out 60) Thursday, a wire-to-wire win in Phoenix, a four-stroke dusting of a very game Brandt Snedeker and a 256