After not watching much of the first three rounds of the Masters, we carved out a nice groove on the couch yesterday for five steady hours of viewing. We saw Tiger and Phil bring out the best in each other (a scorching run up the leaderboard that brought both within striking distance) and the worst in each other (Phil’s prideful 9-iron that landed him in the creek and probably cost him a realistic shot at winning and Tiger’s bogey-bogey finish via errant drives and blind ambition that might have been fueled by the duel with Phil instead of rational thought). We gave up on Angel Cabrera, only to watch him get hot again at the right time and then stay at least lukewarm when it mattered. We yawned through Chad Campbell’s expressionless round. But we were struck mostly by 48-year-old Kenny Perry, who had the “Congratulations Red Sox” jinx put on him late in his round. At Shea Stadium in 1986, with the Sox one out away from winning their first World Series, those words lit up on a small scoreboard in the stadium. Likewise, CBS flashed the “oldest golfers to win the Masters” graphic, we believe right after Perry knocked his Par-3 tee shot within tap-in range to take a two-shot lead with two holes to play. He would have been the oldest by two years, and the way he was knocking it around made him seem, perhaps, like a cinch winner. But anyone who has played even the least competitive of meaningful golf matches knows what can happen down the stretch. Sure enough, Perry started spraying the ball, and a man who went 22 holes without making a bogey finished with three bogeys in his final four holes to eventually lose in a playoff.

The drama even drew in the RBBH, who typically treats golf with the enthusiasm of a trip to the dentist’s office. Our questions to you, readers, are these: how can a sport that seems so slow and mundane become more captivating than faster-moving counterparts? And when you watch an event like Sunday’s, do you root for the leader to finish things off or for someone to catch him?

Also: the Twins should try scoring some runs.

Fasola-link! The capital song.

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