For weeks, on promos on CBS and ESPN, we heard about the coming of The Masters in hushed tones and cue-the-funeral-director music.

Yup, golf. It’s a sport like no other.

Take soccer, where the slightest bump causes the best European player to fall to the grind, curl up in a ball and grab his foot or ankle and writhe in agonizing pain, all in the hopes of fooling the referee into giving the guy who touched him a yellow card. That and to get a rest and slow down the game a bit.

Take basketball, where a guy dumb enough to stand still tries to trick someone into running into him at full steam in order to draw an offensive foul. And if he’s late getting there, he flops and sells it to the ref in order to get the call.

Or baseball, where creativity and acting are rewarded, like when a player is not hit by a pitch but reacts as if he was to get first base. Baseball, a sport where they use the goofiest of hand signals to talk to each other in a way to fool the other team, which they expect is trying to steal those same signs.

Even in my game, water polo, we’re taught how to draw a foul, especially when, in fact, you’re fouling the living bejeezus out of your guy and yet the call goes against him.

All those things are applauded and called gamesmanship.

So when a golfer, in this case Tiger Woods, makes what is later determined to be an illegal drop at The Masters on live TV with a zillion cameras pointed at him and after which he even discusses it in an interview, is rung up by a TV viewer, well, what a stupid sport.

The basic outcry after came from two camps: First, how can things be such that a TV viewer can rat out a guy in a tournament? And the other was from so many who called for Tiger to fall on his sword and pull out of the tournament. I laugh at the latter.

For the record, Tiger made $352,000 for the weekend, which I’m going to bet was a tad bit more than the tattletale made in the same amount of time.

Anyway, on to a real sport: Volleyball. Check out my latest efforts online for Volleyball Magazine, including a story in the mag itself about UCLA coach John Speraw. Here is the link to all my stories:

http://volleyballmag.com/community/profiles/3206-lee-feinswog