For me, the golf season doesn’t officially begin until they tee it up at Augusta National for the Masters. Sure, the PGA Tour has been in full swing since New Year’s, but there’s something about the world’s best players doing battle on one of the game’s most beautiful and toughest courses that signifies that the season starts in earnest here. Watching the event also inspires me to get out the clubs and play myself.

So what about you? Are you a golfer who likes to watch golf, a golfer who doesn’t like to watch golf, a non-golfer who watches golf … or you just don’t care? (If you fall under the last category, why are you still reading this?!)

You can’t talk about the Masters and Augusta National without bringing up Tiger Woods, arguably the greatest player to ever walk golf’s fairways and the winner of four Masters green jackets. But along with this immense talent comes a temper that can reveal itself in profanity-laced, taking-the-Lord’s-name-in-vain tirades on the course for all to hear, in person and on television. The most recent example of this happened in Miami a few weeks ago when a photographer wrongly clicked his camera on Woods’ backswing. I can’t repeat what he said here, but believe me, it was one of the worst instances of his on-course explosions.

When the media asked for an explanation after the round, giving Woods an opportunity to publicly apologize, he instead justified his actions in situations when cameramen have distracted him: “Each time it’s happened, well three out of four times, I made bogey. You have no idea what’s been said on the golf course all the time, in any sport really. It was the heat of the moment.”

In response to that, WORLD’s Mark Bergin sums it up well: “But it is precisely the heat of such moments that reveals true character. Woods routinely delivers athletic greatness in the heat of the back nine on Sundays and has never cited pressure or stress to excuse poor play over that critical stretch. On the contrary, he prides himself on rising to such occasions.

“Not that anyone should expect perfection from the man. The notion of sinless speech is even more ridiculous than an undefeated season. But the challenge to take responsibility for mistakes is one to which all champions should rise. Woods does so for crooked drives and might do likewise for crooked words.”

Be sure to continue to read the rest of Mark’s sports column from the latest issue of WORLD, where he writes about the faith of Davidson’s Stephen Curry and the hope of Barry Bonds.