By Bob Markus

Golf fans are a strange breed. While fans in most sports will, by and large, root for the underdog, golf fans, myself included, always cheer for the superstar. Baseball fans, except some of those living in New York, consider it a day made in heaven when the Yankees lose. Graduates of any school in the country, except Notre Dame, still get giddy whenever the Irish football team falls on its face.

But let Tiger Woods duel down the stretch with some unknown guy from Dubuque and it's likely to be only Tiger who hears the roars: "You the man." It seems to me it's always been that way, from Ben Hogan to Arnold Palmer to Jack Nicklaus to Tiger Woods the majority of applause has gone to the super hero. Sure, each of those has had a few talented foils against which to test his mettle. And those players had their coterie of fans. For Hogan it was Byron Nelson and Sam Snead. For Palmer it was Gary Player and Billy Casper. For Nicklaus it was Lee Trevino and Tom Watson early, Greg Norman, Seve Ballesteros, Nick Faldo late.

But mostly it was the driven Hogan, who came back from a near-fatal auto accident to win all three of the majors he entered in 1953, who earned the adulation of the multitudes. It was the charismatic Palmer, the swashbuckling commander of Arnie's Army, and the Jack of all courses, Nicklaus, who commanded center stage. Now it is the superb Tiger, still looking for someone to play the role of Roland to his Charlemagne. Phil Mickelson might have been the one except he can't putt. For awhile it looked as if Sergio Garcia would pick up the gauntlet, but putting was his downfall, too. Until Sunday, when he made putt after clutch putt down the stretch to eventually overtake and pass journeyman Paul Goydos for the Players' Championship. For nearly 3 1/2 rounds Garcia's putts had been rimming out or missing completely and he looked like Shaquille O'Neal throwing clunkers from the foul line. Then, it was as if O'Neal were to swish 10 consecutive free throws to win Game Seven of the NBA finals.

Suddenly, Garcia could not miss. His clutch seven footer for par at the 72d hole put enough pressure on Goydos, who needed to get up and down for par to win the tournament outright, to almost assure himself of at least a playoff. By then a strange shift had taken place. Many of the fans who previously had not the slightest notion who Paul Goydos was, had become taken with his gritty display of steady golf under pressure and the disarming, self-deprecatory good humor in which he had cloaked himself.

Here was a man who had won only two tournaments in 16 years on tour, ranked 169th in the world, and he was keeping his game together while playing for the richest purse on the PGA tour. He was making the same kind of putts Garcia was missing and at one point had a four shot lead with eight holes to play. That he would eventually lose all of that margin was not a case of his coughing up the lead, but of Garcia's putter finally heating up. Clearly, many, if not most, in the gallery were now rooting for the 43-year-old from California, who wore a cap extolling not the virtues of a golf ball or club manufacturer, but his alma mater, the Long Beach State Dirtbags. Some of them were in tears when Goydos' tee shot on the first playoff hole found a watery grave, burying his hopes for a perhaps life-changing victory with it.

"People were emotionally involved with what I was doing," Goydos was to say later. "and people were unbelievably encouraging." While he lost out on the five-year tour exemption that goes with winning the Players, Goydos was soothed by the second place money of $1,026,000. Garcia won a whopping $1,710,000. That's the biggest payout of any single tournament on tour, including the four majors.

It's too early to tell if Garcia will now be a permanent gnat underTiger's skin. He's still only 28 and Woods is 32. But any comparison between the two begins and ends with the fact they both were child prodigies. Both broke 50 for nine holes at the age of 3. Garcia turned pro at 19, Woods at 20. But by the time he was 28, Woods had already won 39 PGA events, including eight majors. Garcia, at the same age, has now won seven titles, no majors.

No, if there is to be any threat to Tiger's legacy it won't come from Sergio Garcia. But there was another player in the tournament, who could become a force in the years to come. He wasn't even in the mix on Sunday, shooting himself out of last week-end's tournament with a 43 on Saturday's back nine. But he's only 22, he won the previous week's tournament, and he has his eye on the Tiger. His name is Anthony Kim and he bears watching.