E-Mail This Article to a Friend Sights and sounds from the Deutsche Bank Championship at TPC Boston BY CHRISTOPHER YOUNG

While the Red Sox continued to tease their fandom with alternating visions of glory and heartbreak, while the Patriots marched to their fourth straight exhibition-season victory, while the college-football season opened its 2003 campaign, and the eyes of the tennis world were focused on the antics at the US (wide-) Open in Flushing Meadow, NY, the New England area played host to its first PGA tournament in five years down in Norton, Mass. Although the tourney’s moniker — the Deutsche Bank Championship — doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue easily, the fact that the tournament came off without a hitch is a testament to the efforts all of those involved, particularly those in charge of logistics for the Labor Day Weekend extravaganza.

While there were amazing sidelights to the successful hosting of this inaugural event, there was none more astounding than the fact that this venue was hosting its first-ever tournament — with a field that included most of the premier golfers in the world — on a course that just 38 months ago hadn’t even broken ground yet. Indeed, the concept that the TPC Boston facility was actually constructed from the ground up in little more than a three-year period is remarkable, not to mention the fact that its amenities made it worthy for the type of PGA event it hosted this past weekend.

I attended three of the four days of the tournament, which, because of the holiday weekend, ran from Friday through Monday. With the sheer numbers of fans attending and the novelty of the event, there were certain apprehensions that something would just have to go wrong. It would have been, as they say, par for the course. But amazingly, that was not the case. Oh, sure, some of the players complained about some of the wear-and-tear on the course, but when you throw a bunch of pampered millionaires together, there is bound to be some grumbling about something or other; it’s the nature of the beast(s).

Nonetheless, from a fan’s perspective, everything seemed to move very smoothly. Sure, there were crowded conditions in some spots — particularly if Tiger Woods was anywhere nearby — and the concessions were often packed and more often than not a little pricey, but overall, while there was ample opportunity for logistical breakdown, to the average fan everything went as well as one could expect it to.

Here are some of my observations:

• While the tournament field obviously suffered somewhat from the late withdrawals of such marquee names as Davis Love III, Rich Beem, and John Daly — former majors champions all — the gang of 150 that did show up matched up favorably with any tournament field that was not part of a grand-slam event. With the tourney coffers benefiting the Tiger Woods Foundation, you automatically had the world’s top golfer on hand, and his presence alone undoubtedly accounted for the bulk of the interest and sell-out crowd. In addition to Woods, you also had rising stars like Justin Rose, Darren Clarke, and Rocco Mediate, familiar names like Jeff Sluman, Corey Pavin, Lee Janzen, and Paul Azinger, aging stalwarts such as Mark O’Meara, Curtis Strange, and Greg Norman, and a number of majors winners from the past 24 months, including Vijay Singh, Ben Curtis, and Jim Furyk. Throw in a couple of regional favorites like Rhode Islanders Brad Faxon and Billy Andrade, and you had the makings of a pretty entertaining tournament. And it was — even though the names you might have expected to contend for the title were eliminated from contention early, or had late kicks fall short.

• There is no way to underestimate the lure of Woods and the aura he brings to the course. To have a chance of grabbing an unencumbered view of Tiger at the green, you had to be in place at least six holes in advance of his trudging down the fairway. When he arrived at the hole at which you were waiting, the crowds were five and six deep all along the fairways and ringing the green. It had to be frustrating for the pairings ahead of him (who were routinely ignored as they putted out) and behind him (who found themselves chipping to practically empty bleachers after Woods had exited the green ahead of them). Still, it’s quite evident that all PGA pros benefit from Tigermania, and have earned greater sums of money throughout the tour as a result of Woods’s unprecedented popularity. Tiger’s progress through the tournament was the chief source of buzz throughout the assembled galleries, and it seemed that nearly everyone at some point or another rearranged their schedules to catch a glimpse of him in action.

• If not for the presence of Tiger, the second-biggest crowd favorite had to be Greg Norman, the affable Aussie who has yet to win a PGA major on American soil. Maybe people feel sorry for him now that he’s 48 and his best golf is behind him, but the fact that he’s always been such a popular figure on the tour contributes to his robust following, and in the absence of legends such as Nicklaus or Palmer (and the voids created by O’Meara, Strange, and Price missing the cut on Saturday), Norman was second only to Woods in the gallery swells, with Faxon a close third.

• Since the TPC Boston course has been open for just over a year, it was to be expected that the venue might still be lacking in personality. And while I’m happy to say that the course is still quite nice, it could certainly benefit from some floral additions, à la Augusta, and perhaps from cleaning up the water hazards, which are more like swamps than picturesque ponds. The layout could also use some extra signage for the spectators, although there were plenty of yellow-shirted officials around to help gallery members find their way around the course. In fact, one of the most impressive aspects of the whole tournament was the professionalism and friendliness of TPC Boston’s staff and volunteers, who were out in full force and made every attendee’s day just a little bit easier and enjoyable.

• A golf course such as this, hosting a tournament of this type, is a magical place. The outside world becomes merely a rumor, and there are neither cell phones nor those annoying walkie-talkies so prevalent in today’s modern landscape. The incendiary devices, along with beepers and cameras, were confiscated at the gate, thereby creating an atmosphere of pastoral peace and uninterrupted viewing. There were no PA announcements, no heckling, no radio or TV updates of how the Sox were doing, no yankees suck T-shirts. Just long bouts of silence, waves of indistinguishable whispering, and occasional shouts of encouragement as the best golfers in the land came and went by. Unfortunately, New Englanders will have to wait another year to enjoy another similar Shangri-la of tranquility.

• Certainly the chance to see the PGA’s top players up close and personal was the main attraction of the event, but it also offered a hard cold truth about why golf is perhaps better watched on television, or simply played at your local links. Whatever am I complaining about? Tournament golf at this level crawls along at a snail’s pace, with long, long breaks in between player shots. It is particularly evident as the players prepare for their approach shots, and later their putts, since there apparently is an unwritten rule in golf that no golfer can make any effort to prepare for his upcoming shot until his playing partner has completed his own shot. For example, if Greg Norman hits his nine-iron into a bunker on the right side of the green, while Woods chips his ball onto the left side of the green, Woods will make no effort whatsoever to size up his line, practice his putting stroke, or even consider his upcoming putt until Norman has safely emerged from the trap. Only then will Woods — or any player for that matter — begin his extended routine in preparation for his putt. Certainly, with each shot potentially costing a player thousands of dollars, it is understandable that the golfer wants to be supremely prepared to make his putt. On the other hand, as a spectator, one feels his life slowly ticking away while waiting for participants to finally hit their shots. It is routinely a minute or two between the time one golfer hits a shot and his playing partner finally gets around to knocking the ball, and you multiply that over the course of a full tournament, and you begin to understand why hackers and pros alike — for altogether different reasons — typically take five to six hours to play one round of golf. Again, while the spectator is grateful to see Tiger in person, he or she just wishes he’d just get around to taking the damn shot a little quicker — or have the opportunity, like the viewer at home, to get a chance during the interim to cut away and see what’s happening on other greens around the course.

On the days I attended, the crowds were well-informed and well-behaved, despite the fact that many denizens decided that 10 in the morning was an appropriate time to get in line at the beer tents. However, if you serve them, they will come, and so it went. Nonetheless, other than a few yahoos who — perhaps fueled by their breakfasts of champions — waited for ABC’s TV coverage to begin to initiate their hootin’ and hollerin’ at tightly wound balls rolling across manicured patches of grass, I had little to complain about as a gallery member at TPC Boston.

It was all so civilized and peaceful down in Norton that it was easy to forget one’s problems and the other significant goings-on in the wide, wide world of sports beyond those the 18 fairways in Southeastern Massachusetts.

So, anything going on with the Red Sox these days? Patriots? Anything at all?

Sporting Eye runs Mondays and Fridays at BostonPhoenix.com, and Christopher Young can be reached at cyoung[a]phx.com