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PGA TOUR fans will get a chance to see more of Northern Ireland teenager Rory McIlroy in the next few weeks in Florida.

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WATCH OUT FOR RORY: From the sound of it, if you want to be the second-best player in the world -- because let's face it, no one's replacing No. 1 anytime soon -- then you ought to be ready to be better than Rory McIlroy.

The 19-year-old, fresh-faced, floppy-haired Irish kid is drawing high praise from just about everyone in golf these days. Geoff Ogilvy, who ended McIlroy's run in the World Golf Championships-Accenture Match Play Championship in the quarterfinals, said it's feasible the kid will be as high as No. 2 or 3 in the world within a year -- and that would be his worst ranking for the next 10 years.

All week, anyone who played against him, or saw him play, used words like "phenomenal," "fantastic," "amazing" and "incredible." With McIlroy having already won in Dubai and already 16th in the Official World Golf Rankings, it's easy to understand why. -- Brian Wacker

For a video version of the Backspin, click here.

The Top Three

Videos

• Highlights from Geoff Ogilvy's win Watch • What's in Luke Donald's bag? Watch • Outside The Ropes: Padraig Harrington Watch

Links

• Nationwide Tour winner lived in a van Click • Franklin Langham fights a phobia Click • If Champions Tour had a match play event... Click

ELS ON VERGE OF WIN?: Ernie Els' victory at The Honda Classic last year was one of the game's feel good stories. Not only did the Big Easy, one of the game's most popular players, end a drought of nearly four years, he felt comfortable finally tackling a bigger issue that is close to his heart. A week after picking up his 16th victory, Els revealed that his son, Ben, has autism, and committed himself to raising funds to help promote research into the condition.

Els returns to PGA National this week on the heels of his best performance at the Accenture Match Play Championship since he lost in the semifinals in 2001. The family is doing well. He's been watching old videotapes of himself and using a replica the folks at Callaway made of the 35-inch putter he used when he was winning majors during his late 20s. He says he's been "working my ass off." Can another win be far behind? -- Helen Ross

NO ONE'S BETTER AT MATCH PLAY: Geoff Ogilvy has proven that he is the best match play player in the world .... again. Argue for Tiger if you want, and you may be right, but right now I will take Ogilvy. Whenever the opportunity arouse to win a hole or close out a match at the Accenture Match Play, Ogivly capitalized. With his second win, he becomes the most prolific winner of World Golf Championship events not named Tiger Woods.

During the last four years, Ogilvy has made the finals three times on three different golf courses. His win at La Costa came in his first Accenture Match Play and featured four matches that went extra holes. The following year at The Gallery at Dove Mountain, he went 35 holes with Henrik Stenson, whose hot putter was just too much for the defending champion.

Last week at the Ritz-Carlton Golf Club across the street from The Gallery, Ogilvy was up to his old tricks. Consider that his opponent in Sunday's final, Paul Casey, was five under through the first 27 holes -- and still was 6 down to Ogilvy. Very impressive. -- John Maginnes

WE'RE WAITING, PADDY: After the first few weeks of the new season, we were all wondering what on earth was wrong with Phil Mickelson. Lefty quickly squashed that by winning the Northern Trust Open for a second straight year.

Now we're left to find another star to worry about. And that's where three-time major champion Padraig Harrington comes in the equation. In four starts, Harrington has missed the cut twice. His best finish was a tie for 24th in his first start of the season at the Buick Invitational. Last Wednesday, he was he was bounced in the first round by No. 62 Pat Perez.

We all know that Harrington is a player who gears his game toward the majors, but we expect more from him than mediocrity in the other events he plays. After all, he is ranked No. 5 in the world. -- T.J. Auclair

Stock up

Paul Casey: The Englishman who lives in nearby Scottsdale led for 79 of his first 80 holes at the Accenture Match Play and showed a pugilist's mentality in match play before running into the Geoff Ogilvy buzz saw. Still, Casey took some major steps toward being able to win his first PGA TOUR event. It should happen soon. Stewart Cink: That Cink rallied to win Sunday's consolation match says a lot about him. That he beat some pretty quality opponents in Lee Westwood, Phil Mickelson and Ernie Els to reach the semifinals says even more. It's clear that Cink fares well in match-play situations so might as well book him now for the Presidents Cup. Ross Fisher: American golf fans may not know much about him, but the Englishman is worth putting on your radar screen. Having just missed a spot on last year's European Ryder Cup team, he seems determined to show his mettle in match play events, and reached the consolation finals Sunday. Might we see him in Wales next year?

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Anthony Kim: Has a world of talent and a charisma that's the closest thing to transcendent this side of Tiger Woods. Unfortunately, Kim's golf game isn't cooperating. Given his performance in two wins and at the Ryder Cup last year, more was expected. Trevor Immelman: The Masters is a month away and the defending champ appears out of form. He was back in the pack at the Mercedes-Benz Championship, missed the cut at Northern Trust, and was ousted in the first round by Shingo Katayama last week. He's running out of time to build any momentum for Augusta. Sergio Garcia: It was a equally short week for Garcia, as he lost in the opening round to Charl Schwartzel. It was Garcia's first U.S. event of the season, but again not something we expected out of the winner of last year's PLAYERS Championship.

A Quick 18

Front Nine Back Nine Don't read too much into Tiger Woods' second-round loss to Tim Clark, at least on the negative side. Two very important facts: Clark was 6 under through 16 bogey-less holes in their match, and Woods either goes very deep or goes out very early in these tournaments. Of the 12 first-timers in the field at the Accenture Match Play, just two -- Ross Fisher and Rory McIlroy -- made it to the quarterfinals. Only Fisher advanced, however, matching Toru Taniguchi (2001), Pierre Fulke ('01), Scott McCarron ('02), Peter Lonard ('03) and Ogilvy ('06) as the only players to advance to the semifinals in their first start. Meanwhile, how much should we read Geoff Ogilvy's win? Yes, he's won some pretty significant golf tournaments (three World Golf Championships and a major) and he has the game, but generally in flashes. Next step: Consistency. The Americans had 17 players in the 64-man field; England had seven. Yet just as many Englishman (five) made the Round of 16 as Americans. "Obviously the college system out here is maybe a little bit different," said consolation finalist Ross Fisher. "You don't play so many match play tournaments, they're mainly stroke play. So I guess in that sense, yes, we do have a slight advantage." John Maginnes isn't the only one advocating an 18-hole Accenture Match Play final instead of 36 holes, and moving to semifinals to Sunday morning. On the PGA TOUR Network's "Playing Thru" program Monday, T.J Rives also made the suggestion. Worth looking into? After four straight first-round exits, Ernie Els had his best showing at the Accenture Match Play since 2001 by reaching the quarterfinals. Part of Els' success may have something to do with his putter. The Big Easy had Callaway duplicate the one he used in the 1990s -- right down to the same 35-inch shaft. He's also been watching tapes of his old stroke. Much was made about the complex green complexes, as Paul Casey termed them, at the Ritz-Carlton Golf Club. Players don't mind big, curvy, sloping greens, but they had few good things to say about these greens, even at slower speeds. Ogilvy said there might be some changes before next year. Neither of Camilo Villegas' first two matches made it past the 14th hole at the Ritz-Carlton Golf Club and you can't help but wonder if that didn't hurt him against Ogilvy. After winning 7 and 6, then 5 and 4, Villegas wasn't able to muster anything against Ogilvy, who snatched the lead on the fourth hole and never gave it back. How good is Ogilvy in the Accenture Match Play? Not only does he have the best winning percentage of anyone (17-2) and is second on the tournament's all-time money list ($3.54 million, behind only Tiger), but no one besides Ogilvy has reached the final match in the event as many as three times in four years. There were a couple of early tip-offs that Anthony Kim might be headed home early. First, he spent a gazillion hours on airplanes for tournaments from Malaysia to Perth. And the greens were a gazillion times slower than AK likes them. The last time Ogilvy won this event, in 2006, he went on to win the U.S. Open with a one-stroke victory at Winged Foot, just outside New York City. This year's U.S. Open is at Bethpage Black is also just outside NYC. That would be "symmetrical," Ogilvy joked. The jumping cholla (pronounced choy-uh) at the Ritz-Carlton Golf Club is a spiny cactus that can jump and attach to you if you so much as come close to it. It got Ogilvy's ball on No. 11 Sunday. It also jumped on Jim Fuyrk's dad -- twice -- and your's truly once. It didnt feel good and required the help of a marshal and his trusty comb to get it off me. Ogilvy and Casey, friends and neighbors who live only a few miles apart in nearby Scottsdale, bumped into each other on the range at their home club two weeks ago and decided to play a practice round at the Ritz-Carlton Golf Club. Obviously the move paid off and led to what turned out to be a higher stakes version of the Whisper Rock Club Championship. Because the Ritz-Carlton hotel isnt built yet, some players had unusually long commute times to the course from their hotels, as much as 45 minutes one way. On the flip side, the weather was perfect all week, certainly something that golf fans in the Northeast would appreciate right now. Ogilvy also delivered one of the more hilarious lines of the week when talking about why they took separate cars to the practice round: "Both of us drive cars that don't have many seats in them." Casey's response: "Did he say he took the Porsche? Then he probably got here faster than me." So Stewart Cink, which is better: Winning the consolation finals this year or getting blitzed by Tiger Woods in the finals last year? "Getting into the finals last year and having a chance there, even though Tiger pretty much bulldozed me, it was still probably a little bit sweeter," Cink said. Speaking of Casey, it was pretty remarkable to lead for 79 of your first 80 holes in match play -- though that might've come back to haunt him a bit. All those leads never put Casey in a must-make situation, whereas Ogilvy needed 19 holes to win in each of the first two matches. It took Mark Wilson 111 starts to earn his first win on TOUR. It took him just under half that many to earn win No. 2 Sunday in Mexico. Despite a couple of back-nine bogeys, the Wisconsin native shot four rounds in the 60s, including a second-round 64, at El Camaleon Golf Club to win by two over J.J. Henry.

The Forward Spin

Things return to normal this week -- sort of, since there will be a reshuffle on the priority list -- with just a regular, old 72-hole stroke-play tournament in The Honda Classic. This also marks the start of the Florida Swing, as the PGA TOUR moves to the East Coast. So expect to see much faster greens -- certainly much faster than what the 64 players encountered at the Ritz-Carlton Golf Club.

PGATOUR.COM'S Brian Wacker wrote Stock Up and Stock Down, A Quick 18 and Forward Spin.