MASTERS NOTES

AUGUSTA – Talk of the Friday afternoon set-to in the Masters champion’s locker room between Phil Mickelson and Vijay Singh, two of the game’s heavyweights, was still buzzing around Augusta National yesterday.

Singh, who had lodged a complaint about the length of Mickelson’s spikes during Friday’s play, was confronted during the rain delay later that day by Mickelson in the champion’s locker room, which is reserved for former Masters champions and is off-limits to the press.

Singh said curtly yesterday when asked what his side of the story was: “There is no side. You know it all. Let’s talk about my golf game.”

Mickelson, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, when asked about his spikes, said, “I tried to be as careful as I could today.”

The consensus among players and caddies around the grounds was that Singh’s psych-out maneuver was hardly within the spirit of the game and he came out of the situation looking not only petty, but like a bad guy.

One of the best stories lurking on the leaderboard is Thomas Bjorn, who sits five shots back of the Chris DiMarco’s lead at 8-under-par. Bjorn is best known for his implosion at the 2003 British Open at Royal St. Georges, where he took three hacks to get out of a fairway bunker on 16 in the final round and lost to Ben Curtis by one shot.

Later the following year, Bjorn, locked in a horrible psychological slump, walked off the course during a European Tour event, saying he couldn’t play again until “the demons” disappeared.

Now, here he is – a year removed from his basket case days when he shot 80-77 and missed the cut here – in contention.

“This is where you want to be,” Bjorn said. “I just think I enjoy my game more than I probably ever have. This is probably the first time in a major championship where I actually feel I am enjoying myself. I always thought it was such hard work. That might be the key to playing well, enjoying myself.”

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Fred Couples and his caddie, Joe LaCava, are football Giants fans and, through an intermediary, asked the team’s equipment staff – Ed Skiba, Joe Skiba, Ed Wagner and Tim Slaman – for some Giants T-shirts and shorts, which were delivered here earlier this week.

In return, the equipment crew wanted a Masters flag signed by Couples to them so they could hang it in the Giants Stadium equipment room, to which Couples said, “No problem.”

Instead of signing it by himself, though, Couples went upstairs to the champion’s locker room during a rain delay on Thursday and got 13 fellow former Masters champions to sign it as well, including Jose Maria Olazabal, Singh, Ian Woosnam, Mark O’Meara, Bernhard Langer, Gary Player, Sandy Lyle, Ben Crenshaw, Tom Watson, Phil Mickelson, Raymond Floyd and, for good measure, Jack Nicklaus.

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There were many complaints coming from players about how disorganized tournament officials were about setting tee times for the third round. No one was informed of their exact times, leaving players in the dark.

“This is like the dark ages,” said Langer, a two-time champion. “How difficult can it be to get 50 players back on the course? I told them I have seen amateur events better organized.”

Said Tiger Woods: “I didn’t know what time we were going to go off. There were no tee times. We didn’t have a clue. Someone said there was a computer failure.”