O.b.

First he takes the advice to lay up, now this: Over the off-season David Toms presented his caddie, Scott Gneiser, with the keys to a midnight-blue 2001 Porsche Boxster, a car Toms had originally purchased for himself. "It was kind of a year-end bonus," says Toms. "He wanted the car, and I didn't."

Last Friday, 48 hours after one of Michelle McGann's former caddies had been released from a Palm Beach County, Fla., jail for allegedly stalking her, the LPGA veteran spoke to SI about the ordeal: "There are a lot of crazy people out there," said McGann (right). "This is something that goes along with being in the public eye, I guess." Patrick Hallett, a 42-year-old resident of Monterey, Calif., caddied for McGann only once, in 1989, her rookie year. McGann says Hallett began sending her innocent correspondence in the mid-'90s, but in November the letters took a darker turn. "All of sudden it was like, 'I love you, I want to marry you, I can't be without you.' I was freaking out." Freed on a $1,000 bond on Jan. 2, Hallett was served with a temporary restraining order compelling him to stay at least 500 feet from McGann and places that she frequents.

Think Tom Pernice is uptight? A God-fearing former economics major who lists gardening as a hobby, Pernice, 42, showed up for a New Year's Eve bash at the Mercedes Championships wearing a dark coat and tie, while Hawaiian shirts were the standard attire.

David Feherty's first novel, A Nasty Bit of Rough, will be published in March. In this tall tale Uncle Dickie—protagonist of many of Feherty's columns in Golf Magazine—wages an epic struggle to claim golf's oldest trophy, the petrified middle finger of St. Andrew.

So where was Phil last week? Turns out the AWOL Mr. Mickelson rang in the New Year with his in-laws in Utah. Then, while his colleagues were battling the elements in Maui, Mickelson was tuning up his game amid the computerized sterility of the Titleist test center in Carlsbad, Calif., a quick drive from his new manse in Rancho Santa Fe.