After the high drama of Sergio vs. Tiger last weekend, producing the best Players Championship ratings in more than a decade, we were probably due for something a bit less energetic. But as a fisherman would say, a calm surface can disguise a roiling storm below,* and despite a tranquil veneer, the golf world was alive and stirring this weekend.

*It's not clear that fishermen actually say this or that the phenomenon of subsurface storms is a real thing.

Here are five things that happened this weekend that might interest YOU, the Grantland reader:

In case you were busy making a new nonalcoholic mixed drink that's half soda water, half tonic water called the Van de Velde, here's what you missed in sports on Thursday:

• Playing without Luol Deng, Derrick Rose, and Kirk Hinrich was too much for the Bulls, who fell 95-92 to the Brooklyn Nets. Bulls head coach Tom Thibodeau regrettably informed his team of their depleted forces before the game, adding, "I didn't know the games were optional." He then proceeded to drink straight from a bottle of Gilbey's gin, tell Taj Gibson that he wanted to sleep with his sister, and unleash a barrage of awkwardly profuse "real talk about love and pain" upon the injured Hinrich. Bulls forward Carlos Boozer then yelled out his signature catchphrase, "Can you smell the booze stank in the room?!" before being told by Bulls assistant coach Adrian Griffin that games are not optional. A visibly intoxicated Boozer fouled out of his team's defeat in the fourth quarter.
• Even though he had another solid outing, Atlanta starter Kris Medlen fell to 1-4 as his Braves lost to the Washington Nationals, 3-1. Medlen, snacking on biscuits after the game, blamed his spotty start to the season on fatigue based on his home life. "I've got young boys, and they're up at all hours," he said. "I've only been a little off, which just makes me think I could be 5-0 if it weren't for those Medlen kids!"

Tuesday night, I found myself with a group of fellow writers and assorted vagabonds at a Tucson Steakhouse called Lil Abner's. It was one of those rustic meat-and-potato joints with long wooden tables, no formal menu, and rusted barn relics hanging on the walls. (If it's any recommendation, John Daly used to park his bus out back during tournament week and spend every night inside.) Seven men sat at the table to my left. Two of them, Rory McIlroy and Graeme McDowell, were famous golfers from Northern Ireland. Four were civilians, agents and caddies. The seventh was a lesser-known quantity — a pudgy 25-year-old Irishman named Shane Lowry, whose claim to fame was winning the Irish Open in 2009, and who sneaked into the WGC-Accenture Match Play Championship field because someone else sunk a putt at Pebble Beach two weeks ago. As the 64-seed, lowest in the field, his first-round opponent would be the best golfer in the world, a man with whom he was currently sharing dinner.

At the end of their meal, the seven wrote their names on slips of paper and placed them in an empty glass. When the waitress came by, she drew the names out one by one. They were playing roulette, and the last three names in the glass would be responsible for the bill. McDowell cheered loudly when his name was pulled. The waitress drew another slip. "Rorrrry," she read, the way you'd coo over a child. The cheers grew louder. "Shane?" she said next. Laughter and more cheers. Consternation from the civilians; none of the golfers would be paying. Two days later, at least one of them would have to lose.

In case you were busy realizing that you waited way too long to make that Harlem Shake video, here's what you missed in sports on Thursday.

• LeBron James powered the Miami Heat to their ninth consecutive win as they beat the Chicago Bulls, 86-67, at the United Center. The game was notable both for James's performance and a pair of scary moments. First, James pulled up limping after being fouled hard by Bulls guard Nate Robinson. Fortunately, he's not expected to miss any time. Scarier still, a large lighting fixture fell from the roof of the arena, narrowly missing a group of spectators. While rumors of a "phantom" haunting the arena were quickly dismissed, sabotage by a man envious of James's success is suspected. Early reports describe the suspect as a bald, 6-foot-6, 50-year-old African-American male wearing a mask over his face and six rings on his fingers. He is reported to have eluded capture using his superior footwork, and remains at large.

After a month of golf, Rory McIlroy and Tiger Woods are tied. For dead last.

Not that you’d know, unless you were watching golf. They've already been paid $4 million between them. Not winnings, appearance fees. Somebody smart once said 80 percent of success is just showing up. Here it’s 100 percent. You know you’re doing very well in life when you think you should be offered $3 million in exchange for your appearance.

“What do you charge?”

“I don’t know. What do you want me to do?”

“Just show up.”

“That’ll cost you!”

It doesn’t count as earnings because nothing about the money is earned. It’s found and given. Rory fell into 200 million unearned dollars from Nike last week. Least that’s what he thought. Turns out those clubs are gonna be very expensive to Rory.

Norm Macdonald made two big New Year's resolutions. One was to start writing pieces for Grantland. The other is going to be revealed on Friday in his second piece for us. Today, he shares his thoughts on the 2013 PGA season.

2012, the golden year of golf, began with Phil.

Lefty beat Tiger by nine strokes on the final day at Pebble, winning his 40th PGA title. Eight weeks later, it was looking to be Phil’s year, as he was in the Ultimate Game on the final day of the Masters. But it all came apart when Phil carded a triple at the par-3 fourth, with the victory eventually going to another southpaw, the guy everybody loves to love, Bubba. Even Billy Payne looked happy to be presenting the green jacket to a man who had just cried like a woman.

At the Open, Ernie Els only led once and it was an hour after his last putt. He felt kinda bad about it. Adam Scott felt kinda worse.

Tiger, reinventing his game yet again, served notice that he was keeping the wolves of irrelevancy at bay by winning a sort of Legends Slam: first Arnie’s tourney, then Jack's and finally his own.

The list of things I love about the Ryder Cup is so long that it could fill a (tedious) novel, and golf fans can probably guess most of them. But if I had to narrow that list down to one abstract thought … well, I'd probably say that even though I enjoy competitive pressure and believe that I'd be a total gamer if destiny had made me a pro athlete instead of a human tree trunk, I know — I know — I'd fold like an accordion at the Ryder Cup.

It's just too intense. The innate pressure of golf, the way it punishes even a slight error, is compounded in the Ryder Cup by the responsibility each player has to his team, and country. I've been watching the event since I was young, and I associate those weekends with a feeling of nausea and dread. Disaster waits with every shot. Top players, like Phil Mickelson and Tiger Woods, find themselves at the mercy of forces beyond their control. The code of politeness between players is shelved for three days, replaced by cruel stare-downs and gamesmanship and cutting remarks. The captains obsess over strategies, broad and minute, then watch helplessly from golf carts as everything spins out of their control. The spectators, usually so staid and proper at golf tournaments, are boisterously singing, vicious, and drunk.

In short, it's the greatest damn event in sports. And the 2012 edition begins today.

In case you were out living a life of leisure, here's what you missed in sports over the weekend.

• Peyton Manning threw his first two touchdowns as a Bronco, and the 400th and 401st of his career, in a 31-19 victory over the Steelers. After the game, Peyton received a phone call from someone with a high-pitched voice saying, "Ooooh, mister, you look so sexy in orange. You are like a big stupid carrot." Peyton's face clouded over. "Cut it out, Eli, you little dingus, or I'll tell dad!" he screamed, drawing stares from his teammates.

In case you were out living a life of leisure, here's what you missed in sports over the weekend.

• Quarterback Logan Thomas led no. 16 Virginia Tech back from the brink of defeat with two key drives as the Hokies beat Georgia Tech 17-14 in overtime. Unfortunately, the celebrations on the Blacksburg campus got a little out of hand late Monday night when Virginia Tech students began throwing upholstered hay bales out their dorm windows.

Last June, Rory McIlroy's stunning U.S. Open victory led us to create a new methodology for measuring performance in golf, applying the Z-Score (or Standard Score) from math to fields of players in a golf tournament. This new methodology produces a more accurate measure of performance by comparing a player's four-round performance to that of every other golfer's in the context of that particular tournament, as opposed to the more traditional constructs of par or by merely comparing the winner to the second-place finisher. It's also an analysis that inherently adjusts for the weather conditions faced by the players on their four days at the course, and it produces a score that can be translated across different courses and eras to see how one player's score matches up against another's. It's not perfect, but it's a significant step forward in gaining a truer sense how a golfer played.

Well, if Rory McIlroy was going to end up winning this PGA Championship by tying his eight-shot margin of victory from the 2010 U.S. Open and breaking the PGA Championship margin-of-victory record by one stroke, couldn't he have said something earlier? Because all of the ink spilled over Tiger Woods's likely return to major glory has proven itself to be utter waste once again, as has been the case for each of the final three majors of the year.

But first, let's add a bit more to the waste pile. Woods was finished after his seven-plus holes of constant bogies when Saturday's third round was cut short by the South Carolina lowlands' death clouds. When third-round play resumed Sunday, he was able to get a couple of those strokes back, but not enough to save him from having to assume that aggressive comeback style of play that's never worked in majors — not now or for Golden Age Special Tiger.

In case you were out living a life of leisure, here's what you missed in sports over the weekend.

• Kobe Bryant, the Masked Mamba, scored 33 points as the Lakers avenged his broken nose with a 93-83 victory over Dwyane Wade and the Heat. "From this day forward, I shall never be seen without a mask," Kobe said after the game, "and it won't be this admittedly feminine Mardi Gras feather mask, either. I left my cool ones at home."