It's a new season and a new-look Bunker Mentality, with a new weekly line-up.
Monday will be our weekend wrap-up, Tuesday sees regular Yahoo! colmunist Brian Murphy take centre stage, while on Wednesday we'll have our Fantasy Golf weekly preview. We've balanced our Fantasy Golf tournament to ensure you can enter at any point in the season and still have a chance of winning - sign up here for Fantasy Golf!
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Back to today, and Bunker Mentality has a sad duty to report the apparent lobotomisation of one of golf's most interesting characters.
Because while Rory McIlroy hogs the headlines these days we were reminded of the existence of another colourful Rory at the weekend: Rory Sabbatini.
There was a time when needing to be reminded of the existence of the South African motormouth would have been ridiculous.
For years, Sabbatini was unable to turn up at a tournament without sticking the knife into spectators, the course or best of all his fellow pros in such a fantastically obnoxious manner that he used to get roundly booed on tees throughout the world.
Nice? No. Good value entertainment? You bet.
But now that Tiger Woods's image has changed from living saint to dirty old man, the sport has no need for another pantomime villain - and Sabbatini has mellowed accordingly.
Thus, after his scintillating 10-under-par closing round in Hawaii almost got him into a play-off for the SBS Championship, he didn't sit there grumbling about how kids had been yabbering on his backswing or how the weather had been too hot.
Instead, all his post-game banter was about how much he loves Hawaii, how nice it was that friends and pro-am partners were applauding him from the crowd, and what huge respect he has for his opponents, including eventual winner Geoff Ogilvy.
So, for a bit of nostalgia, here are Rory's top-three moments from his personal hall of shame:
1. 2005 Booz Allen Classic: Rory storms off while playing with Ben Crane
We all understand getting annoyed by playing alongside a slow golfer, but walking on to the green, holing out and storming to the next tee before your playing partner has even set foot on the green is just plain rude. Yet that's what Sabbatini did to Crane on the penultimate hole of the tournament, despite Crane being in contention.
2. 2007 Players Championship: Rory dismisses unbeatable Tiger as "More beatable than ever"
Slating the world number one immediately before one of the big events of the year could be seen as a bit of mind games; doing it four days after he wiped the grass with you during the previous week's tournament just makes you look dim.
3. 2006 Players Championship: Rory's wife blasts Faldo... through the medium of T-shirts
After Paul Casey's infamous "stupid Americans" remark ahead of the 2004 Ryder Cup, Rory's American wife proudly sported a T-shirt ironically announcing herself as a "stoopid amerikan". Nice comeback and fair enough, but a year later the same stunt backfired when she wore a T-shirt saying "Keep Up!" while Rory was paired with notorious slow golfer Nick Faldo. The stunt backfired as Faldo delivered a cracking one-line comeback: "I think it's very embarrassing for them to bring their sexual problems to the golf course," said the Englishman. "Poor fellow. I thought he had enough problems as it is without her announcing them to the world."
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Nonsense of the week: The Royal Trophy. One day in the future, when Chinese, Indian and Korean golfers are winning Majors on a regular basis, the biennial Europe vs Asia match will probably be a mouthwatering prospect that draws 100s of millions of TV viewers. But when they can't even persuade Asia's first ever Major champion (Yang Yong-eun of South Korea) to show up and play, they are on a hiding to nothing.
Stat of the week: 31 putts per round by Ryan Moore. The American hit 89 per cent of fairways, 90 per cent of greens (averaging over 280 yards as he did so) and topped scrambling stats for saving par when he did miss the greens. But his putter should have been declared a federal disaster zone. If he'd been able to putt with even mid-handicapper skill levels he'd have won by a handful of shots instead of being stuck back in sixth.
Shot of the week: 424 yards - the week's longest drive, as whalloped by Steve Stricker on the 516-yard, par-4 seventh in his second round at Kapalua.
It wasn't that much of a surprise, though: the course used for the Hawaiian season-opener has a number of long, downwind, downhill holes that see the longest drives of the year. In 2004, Davis Love III unleashed a 476-yard bomb on the par-5 18th (also downhill and downwind) that remains the longest golf shot hit on the US Tour.
Quote of the week: "It's not the first time I played bad on Sunday and it won't the last" - 2009 US Open champion Lucas Glover, who was on course to become the tournament's second wire-to-wire winner in as many years as he led for three rounds. Instead, he resurrected the reputation he enjoyed for final day collapses prior to that US Open triumph.
Surprise of the week: Having nipped in at the end of last season with a win to earn his spot in the starting field, Scotland's Martin Laird was brilliant as he earned fourth place at the winners-only season-opener. If he'd got his putter going on the final day, it might have been even better.