GOUGE: I like K.J. Choi. I really do. He's humble, speaking reverentially to Jack Nicklaus, embarrassed even that the great man of golf is shaking this lowly former powerlifter's hand. And I smile almost with the hint of a tear as I see how much his son loves him and greets him like a hero when he walks off the 18th green, and how he returns the love in kind with a squeeze of the shoulder right out of the Howard and Richie Cunningham “Happy Days” playbook. And I would suspect that I would like Nicole Castrale, too. Her quiet resolve and her I-got-you-babe husband/caddie are a Lifetime movie of the week in waiting. The way her friends on tour rush out and douse her with champagne when she gets her first win is High School Musical for grownups. She is sweet and tough, a retro Juli Inkster in the making, as it were. But both of them, K.J. and Nicole, are, I'm afraid, the devil's spawn. That's right, straight from the mouth of Mephistopheles comes these two winners over the weekend.

It pains me to come to this conclusion, not unlike the feeling Chris McNeil (Ellen Burstyn) had when her daughter Regan (Linda Blair) started projectile vomiting and growling like a dog, but I'm resigned to it. The use of a driver the size of second base by a PGA Tour player is to me the equivalent of green throwup shooting across the room, and the use of a putter wedged into a gut of a player of any kind is like so many bouncing beds. I'm not saying K.J. Choi hits it farther or straighter because he uses a titanium microwave as his driver (a 281-yard driving distance average for the week isn't going to obsolete any course, and while he did hit 84 percent of the fairways last week, he hit 57 percent with the same driver at the Players Championship two weeks ago). I'm saying a tour player using a driver with training wheels is just wrong. I'm not saying Nicole Castrale made an unfair number of putts with that heavy-handed, stomach-staple pitchfork of a putter she uses (did you see the woefully short effort on the 72nd hole?). I'm saying a professional athlete who doesn't have enough courage to hold a putter the way it was intended to be used should be as shocking to all of us as a 12-year-old girl's head rotating 360 degrees. The USGA seems to have long ago given up on the idea of plain in shape, for fear that some renegade will point to "prior art" as an example of why their driver or putter should be approved. Sometimes you just have to resort to an exorcism. Let's ban belly putters, at the very least, and when it comes right down to it, do we really need square drivers? Where for the love of Old Tom Morris is Max Von Sydow when we need him?

BOMB: No wonder you’re the Gouge of this operation. Maybe your game would get a little better if you came into the 21st century and used one of these puppies. But nooooooooooooo. Instead you’d rather have me pat you on the back, tell you it’ll get better and hand you a Lifesaver like the “Happy Days” moment you referred to.

Granted, when your putter is the club you use to take relief from a hazard, it gets a little uncomfortable—not to mention those suckers are darn near impossible to stuff into a travel cover. But just because a putter or a driver is as unsightly as Britany Spears with no hair doesn’t mean we should banish them to their own island as you have previously suggested. I’m a big believer of playing by the rules. And if you ban these, what’s next? Rolling back the ball? (Go ahead and take your shot, Geoff S.)

As with forward tees and extra loft, some people just need a bit more help to get around the golf course. Sure, K.J. Choi and Nicole Castrale do not fit that category. But the clubs are there, so why not take advantage if you think it will help? Besides, I did some statistical research a couple of years ago on players that went back and forth between the belly and conventional putter and there was no real change in their putting stats. So they’re not cheating and they’re not ruining the game. You might think they look stupid out there, but Choi and Castrale laughed all the way to the bank this weekend with a total deposit between the two that you and I probably don’t make between us in five years.

BOMB: You know what? I gotta hand it to Vijay Singh for speaking the truth on a question probably 99 and 44/100ths percent of the tour players would have ducked. When asked at the BMW Championship about the contractual obligations of playing a company’s current flagship driver, Singh didn’t back off saying, “I think every guy out there is in the same situation. No matter who you look at, they have their manufacturers’ top driver. They will have to try it out unless they cannot [hit it well] and they go back to what they are used to, and I've done that in the past. That's not what the manufacturers want. Unless it's not in the contract, then you have to use what they want you to use.”

Then came the follow-up question: “Why would you ever put it in your contract?” Again, Singh explained the rationale. “Well, I do have it, but always the point is, you're going to try something new, and you never know if it's better than what you've got. … We are very greedy, you want to get the best out of the club and the newer clubs that are coming out are better when they are tested. It's not necessarily true when you take it out on the golf course. And then you realize after two, three, maybe even a month that it doesn't go as good as your old one, [and when] you go back and ask [to use your old driver] that's when the manufacturers kind of go against you.”

Bottom line: Although there is no “crap” being played by any of the guys on the PGA Tour, fact is that not everyone is playing with exactly what they want to due to contracts. It’s why Nike parted ways with Jason Gore earlier this year. Ditto Steve Elkington and MacGregor. Maybe Lorena Ochoa, who doesn’t have any equipment contracts, has the right idea.

GOUGE: I shed no tears for tour players, and I doubt very seriously the inability to execute has anything to do with the product being played. Look again at what Singh said: "We are very greedy..." In other words, tour players like professional athletes in all other sports are incredibly spoiled. They want everything, regardless of whether there is any logical reason for them to believe they're entitled to it, or that it would make any meaningful difference in their performance. At the highest level, it's strength between your ears that makes a difference. Not where the center of gravity might be located on a particular driver or set of irons. Tiger Woods has won his majors with at least five different drivers, and barely used one at all to win one last year. Of course, if you sign a contract that forces you to play equipment you don't like, you probably won't play as well as you can. All that means is you're an idiot, a rich idiot, of course, but an idiot nonetheless. The great ones don't find success in the tour vans, the great ones aren't great because they've been able to negotiate a primo endorsement contract. The great ones just win, whether with this week's driver or a broomstick and a Coke bottle. It also makes you wonder why any company hitches its star to what a single tour player does. I love my 8-year-old son Jack, and I'm pretty sure he'll do most of the things I tell him, but I'm not about to ride in the backseat while he drives my car. And by the way, what in the heck does "And then you realize after two, three, maybe even a month that it doesn't go as good as your old one..." mean? Maybe what it means is that tour players are in their own ways spiritually weak, too. But when you start blaming your equipment, you better be willing to start crediting your stuff (like your golf glove and your tees) for when you win. And that happens as often as a tour player pays a company back for an effort unworthy of his endorsement contract.