There are people who play golf and people who watch golf.

Unabashedly, I belong to both groups.

You can be sure that even some of the most ardent club members and weekend hackers equate watching golf on television to the level of excitement inherent in cleaning the lint rack on your dryer. So I suppose confessing membership in both divisions qualifies me as a bit of a nut.

Not that I always have the opportunity, but I’m part of the rare breed that enjoys watching three consecutive hours of the Who Gives A Rip Classic from Bentonville, Ark., on The Golf Channel.

That passion is multiplied for the major championships.

Call me crazy, but I can’t think of too many sporting events that make more compelling television than one of the Big Four on a spring or summer Sunday afternoon.

But all enthusiasm aside, I find few things in sports more obnoxious than the deification of the major championships by the golf intelligentsia.

Yes, the money and prestige available to the winner of a Masters, U.S. Open, British Open or PGA Championship are a little greater than at the Deposit Guaranty or B.C. Open. I suppose the trophies are a little bigger and more cherished, as well.

In many other respects, however, they represent just another tournament.

Call that sacrilege if you want. I grow weary, though, of hearing the talk about how the PGA Championship is the one format out of the four majors in which you can expect an unexpected winner, as if that scenario is a surprise.

It is as if golf recognizes that every other sport in the world has an “elite” group of teams or individuals standing above everyone else. Then it recognizes itself as the stodgiest, snootiest sport in the world and decides that it also must have a means of separating the wheat from the chaff.

And so the mystical power of the “major championship” is birthed.

Sure, the PGA has provided us with some relatively pedestrian winners: John Daly, Mark Brooks, Wayne Grady, Bob Tway, Jeff Sluman, Hubert Green and Steve Elkington immediately spring to mind.

Know what, though? The other three hallowed championships have offered us their share of equivalents to Buster Douglas, the 1997 Florida Marlins and, dare I say it, the 2001 New England Patriots.

Somewhere in Larry Mize’s closet is a green jacket. Mize holed out from beyond the fringe to beat Greg Norman at the 1987 Masters and never fully recovered, it seems.

Tommy Aaron and Charlie Coody also solved Augusta National. Both have long since used the lifetime exemption to occupy a spot in the tournament that could go to a young, mediocre pro waiting to become the next, uh, Larry Mize.

And who can forget Craig Stadler, better known for his softball beer-league build than his game, beating the immortal Dan Pohl in an ’82 playoff?

OK, you say, quickly submitting the point that, surely, the U.S. Open is a bastion of exclusivity.

Yeah, that’s how Andy North won the thing twice, or how Green conquered the first of his two forgettable major titles.

Oh, and has anybody seen Steve Jones lately? Probably not since he ruled the Open in ’96.

Ben Curtis’ recent victory at the British Open has been characterized as golf’s greatest upset since Noonan defeated D’Annunzio in the 35th annual Bushwood Country Club Caddy Tournament in “Caddyshack.”

To which I respond, puhleeze.

Daly somehow became a multiple major winner by winning across the pond eight summers ago.

Justin Leonard, quickly painted as possible foil for Tiger when he walked off with the British title in ’97, hasn’t been able to hurt a kitty cat since.

Other claret jug owners who merely rank in the fair-to-middlin’ category include Bill Rogers, Ian Baker-Finch, Mark Calcavecchia and Paul Lawrie (who says thank you, Jean Van de Velde). David Duval is starting to look the part, also.

I know there has to be a measuring stick for golfing immortality, and I suppose major championships are a more worthy assessment than the money list.

Contrary to the belief of the people who run the Masters and the folks who write about and broadcast the other three, however, they are not the be-all, end-all of the grand game.

It shouldn’t even make us blink when somebody who’s nobody wins one.

Kalle Oakes is sports editor. He can be reached by e-mail at koakes@sunjournal.com.

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