GLOBAL GOLF WEEK - Inside this week's issue

The Post: Connoisseur's Guide To The 2012 Masters
It is rare to come upon a golf course as renowned as the tournament it is hosting. And that's especially true when it comes to major championships.
Good as Oakmont and Shinnecock Hills may be, for example, they will never be bigger than the U.S. Opens they occasionally host. Ditto Medinah No. 3 with its Ryder Cup, or Turnberry and Troon with their Open Championships, or any of the many great venues that have hosted a PGA Championship. But Augusta National is different, and the course is every bit as big as The Masters. Big enough to get equal billing with the tournament. And big enough to be held very much in the same regard.  To be sure, an argument can be made that the Old Course on the links of St. Andrews is just as significant as The Open Championship that is played there every five years.
But no other track even comes close to Augusta.  Why is it that? Start with the course itself, designed in 1932 by architectural genius Alister MacKenzie, aka the "Good Doctor," and amateur golf legend and Augusta National co-founder Bobby Jones. Initially conceived as an inland links and modeled in many ways after the Old Course, the Augusta National layout they created has evolved into much more of a parklands course.
But that has done little to diminish the deftness of the actual course and the pleasures that golfers derive from playing it. The tees demand that players hit both draws and fades on their drives, the greens insist on the most exacting putting strokes and the approach shots offer great value. Then, there is the bonus of having four par 5s that are reachable in two, something MacKenzie always felt important for he believed fiercely in the concept of risk and reward. Click here to read more

Brian Hewitt: Tiger Woods Can Be Even Better
Tiger Woods finally has won again in an event that means something and he officially has re-staked his claim as the undisputed heavyweight champion of golf's attention span.  Surpassing golf is to be congratulated always. So let us pause and salute a player who still might turn out to be the best who ever lived.
The next challenge for him will be The Masters, which begins a week from Thursday. But Woods' larger task won't have anything to do with birdies and bogeys or azaleas and dogwoods. Tiger has always been popular. He hasn't always been likable.  There's a difference.Somewhere between "Hello, World" in 1996 and the aftermath of the fire hydrant that blew his cover three Thanksgivings ago, he stopped being the distant darling of a large number of his faithful followers.  
Gone, too, were the days when the ultra-bright smile made up for the deadly dullness of so many guarded, sometimes snarky, press conferences.
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Lewine Mair: Torrance Feted For Lifetime Of Achievement
Sam Torrance is an emotional man, one who has shed as many tears as he has holed putts across his 40 years as a professional.  Friday night was big on emotion when, in the Scottish Golf Union's annual dinner at the Crowne Plaza in Glasgow, he received a Lifetime Achievement Award, one which embraced everything from his 21 European Tour wins to the day he out-smarted Curtis Strange to capture the 2002 Ryder Cup.
Sam Torrance, who left school at 13, had no glittering amateur career. In fact, he had no amateur career at all. But his father, Bob, a hard-working greenkeeper-cum professional in Largs, sent him out into the golfing world with something more telling than a good amateur résumé and a wad of cash – a love of the game and a great swing.
Though Sam would often sleep under the counter in his early days as an assistant professional at Sunningdale, he was getting the best of training as he played with members and, more often than not, won their money. In fact, many of them are still congratulating themselves on the way they prepared the teenager for the European Tour.
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