Oh boy. Tiger Woods must have won a tournament or crashed his SUV again, because everywhere you look on the collection of sports web sites across the Internet, you're going to see his name.

In reality, his actions didn't fall at either end of that spectrum, for all he did was fail to close out a tournament on Sunday while being paired with Phil Mickelson. This is the new theme of media coverage assigned to Woods following his fall from grace. He's either on his way to being the old Tiger or is still the post-life-just-melted-down Tiger and will never be who he once was.

One round does not a golfer make, but in terms of golf media coverage, the only way Tiger can get some good coverage is to win on Sunday while intimidating his opponents. Many have decided that he'll never be a scary force on the golf course again simply because he hasn't been recently, but perhaps it's not so much about what Tiger is doing on the course as what others are.

Rather than cast bright lights on the player who beats Tiger these days, a shadow is cast upon Tiger because he didn't crush his opponent and stand on the 18th green making a throat slashing gesture. Why that has become the biggest story is something I'm unable to figure out.

It seemed to me that Mickelson bouncing back from a very rocky 2011 should have been just as big a story, perhaps bigger. We too often take for granted what is happening in front of us and instead want to put a performance in the realm of history or try to analyze it to death.

Tiger is simply a case study in new media coverage. The TMZing of sports reached the golf world when he crashed his SUV into a tree two years ago after Thanksgiving. It has continued with wreckless abandon ever since.

That it has encompassed the golf world is insane in it's own right, but that it continues to be standard practice in terms of Tiger Woods coverage is perplexing to me. We are no longer able to sit back and enjoy/dislike what we're watching every week. There always has to be something more, something deeper, something juicy, something only SOURCES could leak out...

Which is strange when you think about it. Sport is as black and white as it gets. There's a winner and a loser, that's it. The putt either falls or it doesn't.

Next time you watch Tiger play golf, just watch. If we could get the media to stop claiming BREAKING NEWS everytime he misses the fairway, we'll be better for it.

Sources tell me this isn't going to happen, but I'm publishing this anyway.