A Sense of Huber: Is the best yet to come for Rory?

It was nearly dusk on a humid Sunday night in April of 1997. I was getting ready to do my last CNN live shot of the evening along a row of television cameras set up behind the giant scoreboard at Augusta National when I noticed a familiar moustache work its way through the shrubs.

The veteran caddie known to the world as "Fluff," Michael Cowan, was on his way to an interview when we locked eyes.

I waved.

He smiled large.

"Great tournament," I said, shaking his hand.

"You ain't seen nothin' yet," he whispered in his wonderfully peculiar rasp. "Just wait."

He had just finished off one of the most astonishing performances in Masters history, riding the young horse named Tiger Woods to a Secretariat-like demolition of the field.

It turned out, though Fluff would see it from another fairway, he was dead on. None of us had seen anything yet.

I thought of that moment this past Sunday night in the wake of Rory McIlroy's stunning U.S. Open romp. So thorough, so overwhelming and so defining. His caddie is not the sort who would make such a statement, but I was wondering if perhaps this would be the beginning of "You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet Part Two?"

In the vast media center at Congressional, hundreds of hardened, cynical writers had spent the better part of the weekend literally pulling for the young man from Northern Ireland. It was such a strange and unusual sight, one I had never seen before.

In the wake of our long and bitter Dance With Tiger, we found ourselves selfishly cheering him on, simply for the chance to write and broadcast history. It was not that we cared a whit for the man himself or his machine, in fact it often seemed it was in spite of all that.

But now comes a lad worthy of our adoration. The wondrous Dan Jenkins, who has never met in his 81 years a subject he didn't enjoy skewering, actually tweeted that the kid, "has the swing of Hogan and Nelson and the charisma of Arnold."

The honesty of Lincoln, the muscles of Hercules and the goodness of God herself.

We have found us a hero. No matter his credentials. We love his Opie smile. We care for his agent, the inimitable Chubby Chandler, and presumably his Irish setter, as well.

On that memorable evening 14 years ago at Augusta, we could not have imagined what Fluff Cowan was predicting.

One wonders where we will stand in 2025 in young McIlroy's wake.

The response to last week's Sense of Huber regarding moving up a tee-box or two and changing the handicap system was predictably energized.

Cary Miller commented: The problem is that everybody views a handicap as a tool to beat your opponents when in fact a handicap is just to be used to level the competition between players. The problem is that tournaments keep grouping all 10-handicaps together and making them play off one set of tees and not looking what tees the handicap was established.

Jerry Stephenson said: We need to make it easier to post scores on forward tees. My 10-year-old plays the forward tees and shoots in the 70s. He still hits 3-woods to par 4s. But when we finish, the computer doesn't give us an option to post his scores from the forward tees. We need to get all sets of tees rated for both men and women.

Many more of you talked about the stigma of leaving your buddies and moving up to a better comfort zone. It's a difficult situation and has as much to do with ego as anything else. Ego can't be legislated.

Let me know if you think Rory is the next Tiger. Be interested in hearing your thoughts.

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