And if you, too, would enjoy an internal, even external, Tiger Woods’ celebratory power-fist should Patrick Reed chunk one into a trap, and plug, and short-side himself, and three-putt his way out of contention then, yeah baby, you know what I’m talkin' about.

You know there's people for whom 'get in the hole' doesn't mean their ball.

Pat's the poster boy, of course. He's a weird, bad kitty. He may think he's invisible. He may think because he says that's his ball in the palm tree in Dubai, people believe him.

Then there's Keegan Bradley who argued the toss with Miguel Angel Jimenez and who epitomises the privilege and petulance of golf's wealthy elite. Don't dig him at all, old, cold KB, the spittin' and crazy eyes.

And then there is toothy American birdie-machine, Scottie Scheffler, who just today was crowned back-to-back winner of the Players Championship at TPC Sawgrass after smoking a peerless, eight-under 64 and storming to 20-under to win by one.

The man is, all asterisks aside, the hottest player in the world. He’s in Tiger areas of dominance. As Kyle Porter of TV Land said on the Twitters.

Safe to say, the man can play.

And yet, there's something about him. What are you going to do? You just look at the man and things ... bubble up. They say he didn't mean to walk over Cameron Smith's line at the St Jude Championship in 2022, and yet I can't un-see it. And can't cop him.  

Years ago, I had the same thing for Phil Mickelson, with his Alvin and the Chipmunks shit-eating grin, signing autographs, kissing babies, mouthing ‘shucks, that's kinda nice’, with TV cameras thereabouts.

And then we found that he was mad on the punt, and had signed for millions with "scary mother****ers, and was as fallible as the rest of us. And now Phil's persona, honed over so much YouTube video, is just ‘Phil’. And whatever you say about him today, at least he’s being himself. 

Admittedly the following example of Phil's authenticity is of him appearing in a beer commercial, but it's still pretty funny.

Back in front of the box and tooling about on the phone while watching the Players at TPC Sawgrass, with its trees in the way and its confected bunkers and blinding white sand and rough fed with bionic blood-n-bone, I noted on the Twitters this opinion:

And I was like, yeah, he is – emblematic of a generic universe of power-hitting tall people in long pants, protected, wealthy elites, lobotomised of charisma.

Yeah, brother. With you there.

But then I thought, old mate's American. Let’s see what he means.

And I was like, yeah ... but nah. Yeah and nah. The great Aussie yeah-nah. 

Best player on tour? Undoubtedly.

Shows up and is competitive in every marquee event. You bet.

So steady? Not sure that's a good thing, at least for personal entertainment purposes. 

Super talented and fun to watch? Yes and no. He has a talent for hitting fairways and greens. But it's so good it's not much fun. Seve Ballesteros fashioning worm-burners from his knees under trees was fun. Wyndham Clark losing his footing but hitting the green with a low-running draw was fun. Scottie cranking out GIRs, not so much.

Likable and represents the game the right way? He could be the most boring man alive. You'd get better conversation from cabbage.

Scottie Scheffler just misses birdie on 18 at TPC Sawgrass that would've given him an ironically not-that-entertaining nine-under 63. PHOTO: Getty Images

Anyway. After Clark's birdie putt on 18 didn't so much lip-out as horse-shoe hook-out from a hole it was nearly half-submerged beneath, Scheffler won a tournament run by a governing body that took a carpark away from a previous winner, and which then did business with the Saudi money spigot that they’d previously decried as evil and which they took to the United States government as Tim Finchem did to Greg Norman's perceived threat to their hegemony in 1994.

And breathe.

And so to the presentation and Scottie thanked his grandma and nephew and wife with a bub on the way, and it was more wholesome than oat bran breakfast at the Waltons' place in West Virginia.

And then a claque of Important Men in red jackets – green’s taken, clearly – ascended the stage, and Jay Monahan, in his trademark cool-dad white loafers, a man whose talent escapes bejeezus out of me, said a few instantly forgettable words, you'd get more compelling entertainment from awards night at Bungendore Rotary Club.

Not sure it needs fireworks or colourful smoke or the famous Arabian Dancing Men you see on the first tee at Royal Greens Golf & Country Club in King Abdullah Economic City during LIV Jeddah.

But it needs something.

Scottie does too. But given he can't buy a personality at Walmart, he'll just have to get along with having the best golf game in the entire world.