In hindsight, all the ingredients were there for one of the most boring Super Bowls in recent memory: fake grass under a climate-controlled dome, a team from Seattle, two overrated quarterbacks, a beaten-to-death story about Jerome Bettis coming home to end his career in its biggest game. I don't watch the Super Bowl for the commercials or the halftime show (the Stones were painful, physically painful to watch, which I was only able to do for about two minutes), I watch it for the game, which sucked in just about every way: there were way too many missed opportunities, turnovers, dropped passes, stumbles and trips on the fake sod, the officiating was terrible, time management was a disaster, missed field goals, an aversion to first-down-making by the Steelers, and an aversion to stopping on third downs by the Seahawks. If you're Paul Tagliabue, you're going: "How could the Patriots have lost to Denver?" Not long before the start of the XL bust, 80,000 strong in Scottsdale, Arizona, watched the final round of the FBR Open, where J.

B. Holmes, a 23-year-old rookie, won his first tournament in just four tries with a solid performance, highlighted by 350-yard bombs off the tee, which are considerably more interesting than watching Ben Roethlisberger scramble. Than watching Ben Roethlisberger doing anything, really. Last week: None of my outrights came through, but I took the head-to-head with Jesper Parnevik finishing ahead of Tom Lehman (Lehman missed the cut, Parnevik finished T33). Those two units netted $2,000 against the $1,000 loss on the outright, giving me plus $1,000 for the week and bringing the season tally up to $2,984.84.

This week, the Tour makes its annual return to Monterey and the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am. Carson Daly is still a massive tool, as far as I know, but then I only see the King of all Tools but once a year. He probably lives in some far corner of TV Land, somewhere where they don't even bother selling you chips or beer, they just go for hard drugs. He'll be playing this week, as will other celebrities.

Phil Mickelson returns and defends. He appears to be on the bad side of the good-Phil-vs.-bad-Phil game. He'll probably win another major or two and he'll win plenty more tournaments, but he's basically playing for second, as is every other golfer in the world. Tiger's not playing again this week. You have to figure Vijay Singh and Mickelson are thinking time's a wastin' to get an early win under their belts.

To the picks! Take Aaron Oberholser (25-1), 1/3rd unit: He's off to a T24, 15 and T10 (last week) start. He doesn't hit it far but he's pretty accurate and solid with his irons. Last year at Pebble he was T6, the year before he was T4. Take Jesper Parnevik (40-1), 1/3rd unit: Why not? He's still playing well, consistently well with T42, T10, T2 and last week's T33 to start the year. There's no significant problem area in his game right now, and lest you think he can't keep up, he's averaging 294 yards per drive.

Last year he missed the cut at Pebble. Take Vijay Singh (8-1), 1/3 unit: Vijay generally doesn't like the slow play. Last year he made a mess of things, sprayed the ball all over the place and at times looked like a weekend hacker on his way to missing the cut at Pebble.

But he won Pebble the year before (2004). In 2006, he's got as laser-like an ability to hit greens as ever, and the putting is a bit better in the early going. Don't forget about him. Of the two non-Tiger studs currently making the rounds, he sets up better for his first win because he's much closer to Tiger in the mental arena than Phil is. In the head-to-head, take Aaron Oberholser to finish higher than Chris DiMarco (1-1), 2 units: DiMarco finished T15 last week.

He won the week before in Abu Dhabi. That might be the highlight of his year. I'm undecided as to how to play him at Augusta. In a lot of ways, I think his game sets up better for the British Open. But they're a ways off.

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By: Jeremy Church