FANS AT THE MASTERS know golf. They know who to follow and where to go. So early Sunday evening, the majority of them went not with the leader, Trevor Immelman, and not with the star, Tiger Woods.

They went to the exit. Thousands of fans, coveted Masters badges attached to their golf shirts and jackets, walked off the course.

The tournament might have a tradition unlike any other, but the final round was numbingly familiar. You experience drama of this magnitude every time you trim a hedge.

--Tom Sorensen, Charlotte Observer

EVEN FOR THE best player in the world, golf is still the hardest game in the world. Especially on one of the toughest courses in the world.

That's the moral of the story after Tiger Woods failed to win his fifth Masters title Sunday, allowing Trevor Immelman to slip on his first green jacket.

A missed putt here, a wayward shot there. This game of inches shows no mercy.

-- Ken Burger, Charleston Post and Courier

ALL WEEK LONG, countless poets of the airwaves had droned on about one Herbert Warren Wind, the elegant golf writer for the New Yorker who, 50 years ago, had applied the term "Amen Corner'' to that marvelous little salad bowl of golf holes down by Rae's Creek.

Yesterday, it wasn't Herbert Warren Wind, but rather plain old blankety-blank wind that magnetized all the talk. It blew front, back and sideways -- sometimes all three at once -- and swirled and nearly had the lads in tears at times.

Somewhat amazingly, perhaps, Woods got exactly what he needed out of those in front of him through 54 holes, but he didn't get what he required of himself, which was even a hint of his early season form. Imagine if Woods had known that Immelman was good for 75, Brandt Snedeker would limp in with 77, Steve Flesch would post 78 and Paul Casey would accumulate 79.

-- Dave Perkins, Toronto Star

STEVE FLESCH PUT UP back-nine scores that looked like the countdown at Cape Canaveral: "6 ... 5 ... 4 ... 3 ... 2 ..." Paul Casey disappeared so quickly CBS should turn it into a Without A Trace episode. As Brandt Snedeker was bogeying the first hole en route to a 77, his father Larry was pacing near the grandstand with a half-filled beer in his hand. Was it helping?

"No," the father said, "I'm going to need more that one."

Then, there was Woods, who spent so much time pouting this weekend, Augusta National should have fitted him with a green pacifier. He yelled at himself. He yelled at his clubs. He finally sank a birdie putt on the final hole and waved dismissively toward the cup, as if to say to the course, "You win."

-- Steve Politi, The Star-Ledger (Newark, N.J.)

A YEAR AGO at this time, had they handed out a keepsake to Trevor Immelman, it would have been a T-shirt reading:

"I Went to the Masters And All I Got Was This Lousy Intestinal Parasite."

A green jacket is such a more tasteful remembrance.

-- Steve Hummer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution

IN THE ILLUSTRIOUS annals of golf, this 72nd Masters will go down in the history books with the 1992 Yeehaw Junction Yip and Yank Member-Guest and the 2004 Goony Golf Pro-Am held at the Tiki Island Volcano Course.

Green Jacket? This Masters was so dull and neutral, the winner should have been awarded a gray sweater. Those weren't roars echoing across the hallowed grounds of Augusta National Sunday, they were moans. And that massive clicking sound you heard as Trevor Immelman ran away with the tournament Sunday was the nation switching its TV sets to a rerun of America's Funniest Home Videos.

Actually, there wasn't much difference between those humorous home videos and CBS's wall-to-wall coverage of Tiger Woods' putrid putting.

-- Mike Bianchi, Orlando Sentinel