"The tour's veterans may sense it's time to go back to the Way of Palmer, but the young guys know only a one-way street."

I'm not sure how I missed this, but Jaime Diaz files an intriguing diagnosis of the pro game's woes and picks up on the theme echoed in other recent columns: the players have lost touch and don't have much flair.

Golf without Woods underscores how decadent the PGA Tour has become—and by extension, how fragile. In a tanking economy in which leisure time is evaporating, what was thought to be a momentary bobble is looking more like a bursting bubble. With corporate America and TV networks worriedly wondering if they overvalued the product, that dreaded euphemism "market adjustment" is in the air.

And...

All the taking without sufficiently giving back didn't seem to matter for a long time, but now it does. As CEOs reassess where to spend their money, purses actually could be headed down for the first time in decades (following TV ratings). The tour's veterans may sense it's time to go back to the Way of Palmer, but the young guys know only a one-way street.

Camilo Villegas is a good example. Much has come the 26-year-old's way because of his looks, his body, his clothes and his game. But the native of Colombia has never been expansive with the media, so it was a welcome change when after his third-round 63 at Boston, he thoughtfully reflected on subjects ranging from his struggle as an A-student at Florida to speak English, to his fitness regime. But then, casually but with a hint of impatience, he said, "If you guys let me go, I'll go get another workout in." It's a sentence the PGA Tour doesn't need. It does need Phil Mickelson signing autographs, Padraig Harrington opening the book on his recipe for winning majors, Geoff Ogilvy offering astute analysis, Paul Goydos being droll and Rocco Mediate being Rocco.