Phil Deserves Your Love as Tiger Drops (Bleeps)

AUGUSTA, Ga. -- We thank the gods for intervening and back-burnering our long National (Enquirer) nightmare, replacing it with a historic sequence of golf shots from a man who deserves your love. Enough with Tiger Woods, his potty mouth and his revealing return to earth, a third-round wobble accompanied by bursts of needless profanity that violated his proper-decorum oath and confirmed he's still a fraud.

The Masters now is about Phil Mickelson, the polar opposite of Woods in image and the way he lives his life, an immensely popular supporting actor who always has been Tiger's Charlie Brown-like victim but suddenly, here at this surreal Masters, has a chance to reclaim the eminence that Woods tragically tossed away. As the disgraced icon struggled Saturday to control his driver, his putter and his acid tongue, Mickelson seized the momentary limbo with a spectacular burst of back-to-back eagles, holing both shots from the fairway in a stirring flash that returned Augusta National to a sports stage instead of a scandalous backdrop.

And would you believe he almost went back-to-back-to-back, coming within inches of a third eagle? In mere minutes, Mickelson nearly pieced together as many eagles as Woods amassed bimbos. "As it was crossing the hole, yeah, I was expecting it to disappear," said Lefty, smiling like we haven't seen him in ages.

What better way to counter Woods' sordid sex scandal than with a warm, tender victory by Mickelson, who has spent almost a year living and coping with a devastating double-whammy: his wife and mother battling breast cancer simultaneously. It's wonderful that his wife, Amy, did travel to Georgia this week with their three children, though the fact she didn't make it to the course speaks somberly of her continuing fight. Forget about the ordeal Woods has created for himself through his numerous marital infidelities; that isn't worth a blip on anybody's compassion compass. Mickelson is the one who has endured the most piercing agony, a life-and-death horror that forces him to maintain the spirits and well-being of their kids while trying to escape daily anguish through his profession.