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Ernie Els admitted the feeling was a bit strange. As he anxiously waited for the final players to complete their rounds at the Honda Classic on Sunday, the Big Easy was feeling anything but at ease. And he said he had goose bumps when he learned he had won, so big was the victory.

For a guy who has won three major championships and now 60 tournaments around the world, capturing his first PGA Tour title since the 2004 American Express Championship -- and his first win on American soil since the Memorial the same year -- turned out to be pretty special.

"We play out here to win; it's not like this is my first tournament ever & I've won quite a few times around the world,'' Els said. "But I guess we get addicted to that feeling. And when you don't get your rush, so to speak, you miss it. I definitely missed winning over here.''

For a guy now ranked third in the world, it was a long time coming. There had been several close calls and blown tournaments around the world. Now the Weekly 18 begins with what this means for Els going forward.

Els said he began the year with a confidence level of 9 out of 10. It dropped to 7 after he blew the Dubai Desert Classic to Tiger Woods, who overcame a four-stroke deficit on the back nine. And it wasn't helped when Jonathan Byrd sent him home after just 13 holes at the Accenture Match Play Championship.

But a come-from-behind victory at the Honda -- the three-stroke deficit was the largest Els has ever made up to win in his PGA Tour career -- should give him a boost. PGA National's Champion course was a stern test, and Els went 67-70-70-67 on the par-70 course. Now he is scheduled to play the next three events in Florida -- two of them with Woods in the field. And the Masters is just five weeks away.

It was near the end of the 2006 season when Els stated that he had a three-year plan to overtake Woods in the world rankings. Now, 15 months later, Els is third in the world but nowhere near overtaking Woods.

"I didn't realize that Tiger was going to win 10 times or more since I said that,'' Els told reporters, laughing. "I definitely said that because I really needed something, some kind of a goal for me. I am 38 right now, and I can quite easily go and enjoy my kids and go build golf courses and stuff. But I really want to achieve a lot in the game and I still want to win a lot.

"I just felt that's the kind of goal for me to really strive for and practice for. So I'm not sure where I am right now, but we'll see.''

Lorena Ochoa took the first two weeks of the LPGA Tour season off and all she saw was two of her most prominent challengers win tournaments. Annika Sorenstam won the season opener, then finished second to Paula Creamer. They might have been sending a message, but Ochoa -- who won 14 times over the past two years -- sent one back with her 11-shot victory in Singapore at the HSBC Women's Champions. So much for any thought that Ochoa would feel satisfied after two great seasons.

Nobody can explain a wayward golf shot better than Mark Calcavecchia, who whiffed on a chip shot on the second hole during the third round of the Honda Classic. We'll let Calc explain.

"Yeah, I pulled my drive in the left rough," he told reporters. "And there's a few palm trees over there and I was left stymied outside the back of one of them. I could not hit it right-handed, and my only two options were left-handed and turning around and whacking it back this way. And I'm pretty good chipping left-handed, so I just took a few practice strokes. I only had to hit it five yards, and stone-whiffed it right on the inside of it. I didn't chunk it or go over the top of it. I just missed it inside the ball and just shocked the hell out of me.

"And then I hit the next one in about one second. I whiffed, and then I went, 'Pheww,' and hit it again. I didn't want to back off and think about it. I don't know what I thought about, but I panicked and just quick-hit the next one and got it out in the fairway and smashed an 8-iron on the green and made a 10-footer for bogey.''

Calcavecchia grew up in South Florida and went to high school in Palm Beach Gardens. He has a home just three miles from PGA National and was bidding to win the tournament in three different decades -- just as he has done at the FBR Open in Arizona, where he also has a home. But it wasn't to be, as Calcavecchia hit a bunker shot on the 15th hole onto the green and then watched it trickle into the water.

"Wasn't my time,'' he said. "I needed to keep my ball dry, and if I would have done that, it would have been a different story.''

In a monthly update posted on his Web site last week, Tiger Woods talked about how excited he is about the start to his season (three wins in three starts), how he believes he's improved from his three-major, nine-victory season in 2000, that he thinks his short game has improved and that he was happy Fred Couples was named U.S. Presidents Cup team captain for 2009, among other things. Woods also addressed the issue of slow play.

"It's been an ongoing problem on the PGA Tour for a long time,'' Woods wrote. "I honestly believe the pace of place is faster in Europe and Japan. It has been suggested offenders be penalized with strokes. The problem is you get may get one guy that slows down a group for playing at a snail's pace and gets them all put on the clock, which isn't fair. I know this is a complicated issue. Hopefully it can be addressed in the near future.''

And wouldn't it be great if Woods continued to push the issue?

While Woods will try to extend his PGA Tour winning streak to five at next week's Arnold Palmer Invitational, the platitudes have come fast and furious for the No. 1 player in the world. Vijay Singh, for one, believes that only helps Woods.

"It's up to us to give ourselves a kick up the butt, play well and beat him,'' Singh said in India, where he was competing in the European Tour's Johnnie Walker Classic. "If you stay back and admire him, you're never going to get up there. That's what is happening with a lot of players.''

Singh is the last player not named Tiger to hold the No. 1 world ranking, a spot he rose to in 2004. Woods regained it for good in 2005.

"He's playing incredible golf,'' said Singh, who is now 11th in the world. "And there is nothing we can do but play better. … At the moment, Tiger is doing everything right and even the luck is going his way. When those things are going his way, it's very hard to go up against him.''

Singh didn't have to worry about Woods in India. A final-round 72 left Singh well back of New Zealand's Mark Brown, who shot a final-nine 31 to win. Adam Scott tied for 30th and Colin Montgomerie missed the cut.

When Greg Norman was named captain of the International team for the Presidents Cup at a news conference last week by PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem, it was again a reminder of their long-running feud, which both attempted to downplay. Norman said their history was just that. And yet, it is hard to forget some of the things that have been said.

Norman has long maintained that Finchem thwarted his idea for a World Golf Tour in 1994 -- and then claimed it for himself with the World Golf Championship events that began in 1999. Of course, Finchem was simply protecting the PGA Tour. Norman had proposed a series of eight events, four played internationally, with big-money purses and guaranteed paydays.

When Norman was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 2001, Finchem did the inducting -- and thanked Norman for his contributions, including the World Golf idea.

Which reminded us of this comment Norman made in a Golf Digest interview: "Never, ever will I forgive Tim Finchem, even if he inducts me into a Hall of Fame once a week. It was a shame [he credited Norman with the World Tour idea]. It was sad. Cut a guy's legs off, then give him a pair of shoes.''

Amid all the news on the PGA Tour last week -- Presidents Cup captains selected, FedEx Cup points tweaked, Rule 78 amended -- came the move of the Fry's Electronics Open from Grayhawk Golf Club in Scottsdale, Ariz., to San Jose, Calif. The move -- which was expected, as Grayhawk was a temporary stop until the tour could find another location -- will not take place until 2010, and it is not so strange, except for the fact that the new event will be renamed The Institute Championship and will become an invitational event with a 120-player field.

An invitational? This is one of the seven Fall Series events in which most of the fields are composed of players hoping to either move up on the money list or struggling to keep their PGA Tour cards. Many of the top players in the world skipped most if not all of these tournaments in 2007. So why an invitational? Who is being invited? And why the limited field?

Sweden's Jesper Parnevik is friends with Tiger Woods, so perhaps the unwritten rule of not antagonizing Tiger doesn't apply. Nonetheless, he's taking no chances -- even though you could argue that Woods is eternally indebted to Parnevik. After all, Parnevik is the one who introduced Tiger to his wife, Elin.

So Parnevik was asked his take on the verbal challenges to Woods, by such players as Stephen Ames and Rory Sabbatini. England's Ian Poulter -- although he said his comments were taken out of context -- suggested recently that when he hit his stride, he and Tiger would separate themselves from the rest of golf.

"The next time Tiger plays Ian, he'll …" Parnevik started, before someone suggested, "Annihilate him?''

"Yes, of course,'' Parnevik said to laughter. "I try to be as nice to him as I possibly can. Maybe that's why my match play record against him is pretty good. It's hard to explain, but it's almost impossible to be as good as Tiger is in this game.''

Parnevik is off to an indifferent start this year, with no finishes among the top 25 in six starts, including two missed cuts. His plight was not helped when he came down with a case of Montezuma's Revenge while in Mexico for the Mayakoba Golf Classic in Cancun. Parnevik toughed it out and finished the tournament in a tie for 63rd. But it wasn't fun.

And it meant no preparation for the Honda Classic.

"I didn't think I could play,'' he said. "But sometimes that's good in golf. You go out there with very low expectations, just one goal is to finish the round, and there you go, all of a sudden you start scoring better.''

Parnevik opened the Honda with a 68 but shot 75 in the second round and went on to tie for 24th.

In a recent Hot Seat interview for ESPN.com, comedian George Lopez spoke of his love for golf. "I respect it and it has really changed my life for the better,'' he said. Lopez is serious. Not only is he the celebrity host for the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic in the Palm Springs, Calif., area -- where he not only hosted the event but played in it for four days -- but he also made an appearance as an amateur participant at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. Apparently, Lopez cannot get enough of the celebrity golf scene. Last week, the Outback Steakhouse Pro-Am announced the Lopez would be participating in the Champions Tour event near Tampa in April. He'll be joined the Bill Murray, who skipped Pebble Beach this year. Murray and pro Scott Simpson will be defending their pro-am title.

Former Masters champion Ian Woosnam turned 50 on Sunday, making him eligible for senior golf. He will make his first start this week on the European Seniors Tour in the DGM Barbados Open. He is expected to make his Champions Tour debut later this month at the Ginn Championship. Woosnam, who won 29 times on the European Tour and twice topped the Order of Merit, is not expecting much in the early going of his senior career. He played just seven tournaments in 2007 and made no cuts due to recovery from a viral infection.

PODS, a portable storage and moving company, signed on as title sponsor of the Tampa Bay PGA Tour event just weeks before the 2007 tournament. But the ink had barely dried on the contract when the company had to pull out because of its pending sale. PODS is on the hook for this week's tournament at the Innisbrook Resort but has already announced that it will bail after this week, leaving the tournament to search for another sponsor. Again.

Despite being played at one of the best courses on the PGA Tour -- Innisbrook's Copperhead is universally praised -- the event can't seem to secure its future. That wasn't always the case. JC Penney was the title sponsor of a mixed-team tournament for more than 20 years. But after John Daly and Laura Davies captured the last JC Penney in 1999, there have been a series of changes.

Tournament organizers sought a spot on the PGA Tour schedule and were given opposite-event status (up against the Presidents Cup) in 2000, when John Huston won the Tampa Bay Classic. A year later, the event was canceled during the week of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, then returned in 2002. By then, the tournament had already hit a home run, getting Chrysler as a title sponsor from 2003 to 2006 and the last spot before the Tour Championship on the schedule.

And when the PGA Tour moved the Players Championship to May, Innisbrook got a coveted spot in the spring, but Chrysler had left as a sponsor. In came PODS, but just as quickly is going away.

So what happens if no title sponsor is found? It would be awkward for the tour to leave Florida in the middle of March and return. But tournaments cannot exist without sponsorship.

Once considered among the most promising players in women's golf, Grace Park has not had a top-10 finish since 2005. The winner of the 2004 Kraft Nabisco, Park has been plagued by injuries and is off to a rough start this year, having missed the cut in both of her events. She has missed eight of her last 10 cuts.

This week's PODS Championship is the last opportunity for players to qualify for the second World Golf Championship event of the year, the CA Championship at Doral. The tournament is in two weeks. Anyone in the top 50 in the Official World Golf Ranking or top 10 in the FedEx Cup points standings through Sunday will qualify for the March 20-23 event. The top 30 in the FedEx Cup standings and top 50 in the world at the end of 2007 also qualified. Justin Leonard, D.J. Trahan, J.B. Holmes and Steve Lowery are the latest to have moved into position for an invite to Doral.

"She's playing good golf. It's fun to see, and it's good for women's golf. … I hope a lot of people are watching because this generation that you're watching in women's golf is as good as it's ever been. I hope people are noticing, I hope people get involved. Lorena is leading the charge right now, and it's fun to be a part of it.'' -- Annika Sorenstam, who has a win and two seconds this year, but finished 11 strokes behind Lorena Ochoa at the HSBC Women's Champions.

Bob Harig is a frequent contributor to ESPN.com. He can be reached at BobHarig@gmail.com.