JIM NANTZ

The increasingly brutal, on-air act of CBS' Jim Nantz has reached the point of no return. Nantz, syrupy and overly sentimental for years, has gone from nauseating to intolerable. As third-round co-leader Angel Cabrera walked to the 18th green yesterday, Nantz commented that "one can't help but think of Roberto De Vincenzo," a fellow Argentine who won over 230 professional tournaments worldwide and is widely considered to be the father of golf in South America.

Still, De Vincenzo, who at 85 enjoyed his greatest successes in the 1950s and 1960s, won only seven times on U.S. soil and only one major. Therefore, in this age of the Tiger Woods, when a majority of those tuning into major championships are only doing so because he is playing or in contention and know or care little else about the PGA Tour, it's patently absurd to say that "one cannot help but think of" a man who not more than seven people watching the telecast yesterday could pick out if the old man was sitting on their lap.

Nantz is detached. He thinks everyone views the world through the same prism he does -- which is to say the prism of a white male who socializes with and thinks in much the same way as the typical hyper-pampered PGA Tour player. The only thing viewers were thinking of when Cabrera was walking up 18 -- if they were still watching after Tiger had finished -- was how they were going to spend their Sunday now that the only reason to watch was out of contention.