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Will Y.E. Yang's (right) recent win and K.J. Choi's TOUR success spark a Korean golf emergence on the PGA TOUR?

Welcome to PGATOUR.COM's newest feature. Each Monday, the Backspin will provide insight and analysis on the latest results, happenings and news on the PGA TOUR. We welcome your feedback; click here to let us know what you think!

JOHNNY ON TIGER: I was watching the NBC broadcast of The Honda Classic on Sunday (although I have to admit my remote was getting a workout because of the UNC-Duke game) and something Johnny Miller said gave me pause. He and Dan Hicks were in the booth talking to the legendary Jack Nicklaus and the subject of Tiger Woods came up. Surprise, surprise.

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The Top Three

Videos

• Roof-top shots from high above the green Watch • Highlights from Y.E. Yang's win Watch • What's in Camilo Villegas' bag? Watch

Links

• Norman: Time for a pay cutClick • FBR Open's schedule change Click • Eight inducted into PGA Golf Professional HOF Click

Miller was saying that he thought this week's World Golf Championships-CA Championship was an important week for Tiger. He seemed to feel that Tiger needed to win or contend at Doral, where he has played so well in the past, or else he might start having doubts.

For goodness sakes -- it's only his second tournament back. And do you really think Tiger has any doubts about his ability? He may be the most supremely confident athlete on the planet. I just don't understand why we can't let things happen and appreciate Tiger -- regardless of what happens this week. -- Helen Ross

WHAT'S IN A DESIGN?: The last two weeks have been an interesting contrast in Nicklausian course design.

Last week, few players could muster anything positive to say about the contrived -- and diabolical -- greens at the Jack Nicklaus-designed Ritz-Carlton Golf Club, site of the World Golf Championships-Accenture Match Play Championship. Even finalists and Arizona residents Paul Casey and Geoff Ogilvy seemed bemused by the greens.

At The Honda Classic, the Golden Bear's redesign of holes 15 through 17 at PGA National a few years ago has brought less criticism -- even as the number of golf balls in the surrounding water increased as fast as our national debt. Why hasn't the Bear Trap drawn the same ire? Mostly because it fits the landscape and it fits the players' eyes much more naturally.

In other words, give a pro golfer a course as natural as Florida orange juice and they'll be just fine with it. Anything else will leave a sour taste. -- Brian Wacker

ROOKIE TO WATCH: The early candidate for PGA TOUR Rookie of the Year has got to be, at least from my vantage point, Scott Piercy. In six starts, he's missed the cut just once -- at the Buick Invitational -- and has not otherwise finished worse than a tie for 20th.

Sunday at PGA National was another testament to how well this rookie from Las Vegas is adapting to life on TOUR. Thanks to a brilliant closing score of 5-under 65, Piercy shot up The Honda Classic leaderboard to finish in a tie for fifth place. It was his best finish of the year and second top 10 to go along with a tie for sixth at the FBR Open.

Prior to this season, Piercy spent 2008 on the Nationwide Tour, where he won twice.

While Piercy's consistency has been more than you'd expect for a first-year player on TOUR, his final round on Sunday should really pop out at you. PGA National is far from an easy track, yet Piercy, whose 68.89 scoring average is 10th best on TOUR, negotiated it beautifully with six birdies and just one bogey. Can a win be that far away? -- T.J. Auclair

KOREAN IMPACT?: Of the top 32 players on the LPGA Tour's Rolex Rankings, 12 are Koreans. Of the same numbers of players in the men's Official World Golf Ranking, one (K.J. Choi) is Korean. But now that Y.E. Yang has become the second Korean winner on TOUR with his Honda Classic victory, should we expect the Korean floodgates to open on the men's side much like they did on the women's side when Se Ri Pak broke through in 1998?

Not really. Remember that Pak won two majors as an LPGA rookie in 1998. So far, Choi's best major finish was a third at Augusta in 2004. Yang's best finish in a major was his T30 in the Masters two years ago; he'll get another shot at Augusta next month thanks to Sunday's win.

Yang, who jumped 314 spots (to 146) in the world rankings after his win, said the "biggest" reason why Korean men haven't had the same impact on professional golf as the women is the two-year military commitment all Korean men must serve. "It takes you out of the routine," he said. But let's see what kind of impact is made if and when a Korean player wins a major. Choi -- and now Yang -- figure to get plenty of chances in the next few years. -- Mike McAllister

Stock up

John Rollins: No final-round 74 this time for Rollins, who, unlike at the Buick Invitational, had a terrific weekend. He was 2 under on the back nine at PGA National, including a birdie on 18. Only one other player matched his weekend total of 5-under 135 (68-67) as Rollins finished second for the second time this season. Scott Verplank: That other player who matched Rollins' weekend was Verplank. His 66 on Sunday was the second-lowest score of the final round and it moved him from T41 to T13, his highest finish of the season and second top 15 in as many weeks. He played his last 21 holes in 5 under without a single bogey. Erik Compton: The two-time heart transplant recipient, who was in contention through 36 holes, didn't use a cart last week, even though the TOUR granted him one. He summed up his story by noting that his newborn daughter, Petra, is the product of four hearts: the three he's had plus the one from his wife, Barbara.

Stock down

Mark Calcavecchia: It's hard to be down on a 48-year-old who was never supposed to contend at The Honda Classic, even if he has won it twice. But he's had as many good memories there as bittersweet ones, and Sunday was the latter with a couple of sloppy bogeys and a wet double bogey on the back nine that cost him a Honda hat trick. Robert Allenby: One of the best ballstrikers on TOUR, Allenby struggles with putting, especially at close range -- inside 5 feet he ranks 161st, from 5-10 feet is 146th and from 15-20 feet is 102nd. Those putts ate the Aussie up at PGA National, where he had fewer than 30 putts just once, despite being T3 in greens in regulation. Mathias Gronberg: The Swede's biggest injury might have been a bruised ego after withdrawing. He opened with an 89 that featured a back-nine 50 before returning Friday to shoot 43 on the back before pulling out of The Honda Classic. Last guy to shoot a 50 on TOUR? Phil Tataurangi, nine years ago in Greensboro.

A Quick 18

Front Nine Back Nine Want to know a big reason Y.E. Yang came out of nowhere to win? Entering the week, he ranked 169th in driving distance, 151st in driving accuracy and 136th in greens in regulation. During the week, he was 13th, 47th and third, respectively, in each of the categories. One more cut note of importance: Mark Calcavecchia made his 499th career cut this week, finishing T22 in his 705th career start. A two-time winner of The Honda Classic (1987, 1998), Calcavecchia has six top-10 finishes in the event, including a T4 finish in 2008. Sunday turned out to be a pretty good day for Korea. In addition to Yang's win, his countrywoman, Jiyai Shin, won the LPGA Tour's HSBC in Singapore, while the Korean team shut out China in the World Baseball Classic. Thanks to a final-round 4-under 66, Ernie Els finished T22 this week in his title defense. That means that Jack Nicklaus remains the only player to win The Honda Classic in back-to-back years (1976-78). Last year, Yang teed off first in the final round of The Honda Classic as a single, shooting a final-round 1-over 71 that took just 1 hour, 53 minutes and ended at 9:56 a.m. Yang might not have even been out of bed by then this year. The third-round leader or co-leader has won 7 of 8 events this season. That includes Pat Perez at the 90-hole 50th Bob Hope Classic presented by Arnold Palmer. Because of a final-round wash-out at the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am, Dustin Johnson emerged victorious as the 54-hole leader. Yang's reaction to his approach shot on 18 that landed some 50 feet away from the hole, leaving him a difficult two-putt to secure his first career TOUR win, might have elicited the line of the week from NBC's Johnny Miller, who said, it looked like "someone electrocuted him at impact." D.A. Points and Scott Verplank were the only players to manage bogey-free rounds Sunday. Oddly, though, Sunday was also the lowest scoring day of the week with the field averaging 70.653, compared to 72.378 on Thursday, the highest scoring day of the week.. The Honda Classic has been played at PGA National only since 2007, but in each of those three years has produced a single-digit under-par winning score. Mark Wilson won at 5 under in '07, followed by Ernie Els' 6 under in '08 and Yang's 9 under this year. After a T5 at the World Golf Championships-Accenture Match Play Championship last week, Northern Ireland's Rory McIlroy continued to show why so many people like his chances to be one of the top three players in the world with a T13 at PGA National John Rollins was the only player to post four rounds in the 60s this week but all it netted him was the seventh runner-up finish of his career (2009: The Honda Classic, Buick Invitational; 2008: Legends Reno-Tahoe Open; 2007: FBR Open, Bob Hope Chrysler Classic; 2005: B.C. Open; 2003: Buick Classic). Eleven players have now earned their maiden TOUR victory at The Honda Classic: Leonard Thompson (1974), Larry Nelson (1979), Kenny Knox (1986), John Huston (1990), Tim Herron (1996), Stuart Appleby (1997), Matt Kuchar (2002), Todd Hamilton (2004), Padraig Harrington (2005), Mark Wilson (2007) and Yang (2009). The current longest streak of consecutive cuts made on the PGA TOUR is 30 and that belongs to Tiger Woods and Robert Allenby, who is still looking for his first TOUR win since 2001. Allenby also has the somewhat dubious honor of earning the most top 10s on TOUR without a win since 2002. Here's the breakdown of Mathias Gronberg's opening-round 19-over 89: Three triple bogeys, two double bogeys, six bogeys, 7 pars, 29 percent of fairways hit, 17 percent of greens in regulation, 29 putts and a driving distance average of 279 yards. Allenby, by the way, wore a pink shirt on Sunday in memory of his mother, Sylvia, who passed away from cancer a month ago. Allenby has now posted three consecutive top-5 finishes at The Honda Classic (T5-2007, T4-2008, T5-2009). He also finished T4 at The 2004 Honda Classic. Did you catch the first episode of the "Hank Haney Project" on GOLF CHANNEL last week? Haney certainly has his work cut out for him. At the same time, Charles Barkley did seem to make at least a little progress with his swing, which is to say he hit the golf ball and didn't injure anyone. Speaking of cuts, Davis Love III has never missed a cut at The Honda Classic. Making his 15th career appearance there this week, Love finished in a tie for 13th after closing with a 67 on Sunday. Speaking of Love (which we did at the turn), that T13 finish propelled him to 50th in the Official World Golf Ranking. If he stays there the rest of this month, he'll be back at Augusta after missing out last year for the first time since 1990.

The Forward Spin

Two words sum up this week's World Golf Championships-CA Championship at Doral: Tiger Woods. But not because it's his first stroke-play event since returning from knee surgery (you might have heard about his return to the TOUR two weeks ago in Arizona). Woods has owned the Blue Monster, winning there three times in his career. He's also won this event a total of six times -- three of which came when it was known as the World Golf Championships-American Express Championship, before it merged with the Ford Championship at Doral. Woods' 24-under 264 in 2005 at the Ford Championship at Doral was also a record for that event.

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