Pond Scrum: Hawaii opener, emerging players, McDowell's clubs

This will come as a shock to some younger readers. Despite what many have come to believe, golf was not invented by Tiger Woods, circa 1996.
Forget the particular year. You whiffed by several centuries.
Just to be clear, Woods often chased skirts when he wasn't whacking a little white ball. The ancient Scots, however, often wore kilts while chasing the ball around.
There endeth the history lesson and sermon.
In case you also missed, or flatly ignored, another big development in the game of late, the global tide has greatly begun shifting to the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, where a legion of players has stormed the top of the world rankings, begun racking up majors, hoisting the Ryder Cup and building a progressively better product with the European Tour.
All told, that's why it's the perfect time to find somebody who speaks Irish, Scottish and a smattering of old-fashioned English to help put the game into better context. No other general-sports website in the States has a European Tour expert on board, and veteran scribe John Huggan, who once played for the Scottish amateur national team with Colin Montgomerie, has written several books and has covered the blossoming foreign circuit for years.
Each week, from both sides of the Pond, the twosome of Huggan and CBSSports.com's Steve Elling will kick at corpses and hornet's nests, tip over a few sacred cows, poke and prod, plus generally debate and debase each other on the topics of the day.
According to golf lore, James II banned the game in Scotland in 1457, because he felt it interfered with the learning of archery. Not to worry, because these two trans-continental curmudgeons have a quiver full of arrows and they're ready to shoot. Maybe even at one another.

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There's still snow on the ground in Scotland, yet the PGA Tour season is beginning this week in Hawaii. Phil Mickelson and Tiger Woods are again missing, and only one major winner from 2010 is entered. How would you guys spice up this lid-lifter, or is a sleepy start in the islands a good thing?

extracted from cbssports.com