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What I love about watching a major golf tournament: it obliges me to do nothing. A swing, the ball hops, rolls, is somewhere. It's not even my job to find it; the camerapeople do all the work.

Personalities attached to the event of the ball ascending, descending, rolling, stopping: Tiger, whose face becomes godlike with concentration. Mickelson, always caught in between a laugh and a grimace. Garcia, maddening, get on with it! Shots of strays from yesterday and yesteryear: please Freddie Couples, make another cut. Applause Friday at 18 whether you do or you don't. Farewell!

The final personality: the course. This one is one that people you know play, maybe you've played it yourself. It's not a dream vacation to Scotland, miles off the highway in Florida, a shrine where every bridge is named for a legend who crossed it on his way to his epic tournament day. Named for a tree that grows mostly around it and nowhere else, it's in the public domain, but unique as a face as well.

There's a stray torrey pine in the botanical garden at UCLA. I used to visit it all the time as an undergraduate. You can't look at the tree without thinking of the course: now that's an identity for a course to have. An identity rooted in nature, nature presiding over the Pacific, nature which on the smallest screen looks exotic, even for people who live here, who dip down PCH all the time.