Tough trio has given tour an unusual start to remember

Four multiple winners. Five playoffs.

A lefty -- but not Lefty -- in a green jacket.

And still no sign of David Duval.

Sixteen weeks into the season, this is shaping up to be a strange year on the PGA Tour.

Davis Love III won the MCI Heritage last weekend to join Tiger Woods and Mike Weir as three-time winners. That sent PGA Tour research guru Dave Lancer thumbing through 53 years of history before he found so many players winning so much so early.

The last time it happened was in 1950, when Sam Snead, Jimmy Demaret and Jack Burke Jr. each had three victories in the first 15 weeks of the season.

How rare are so many three-time winners? Go back to 1992 before there was a trio of them for an entire season -- Love, Fred Couples and John Cook, who won his third event at the Las Vegas Invitational in October.

Love won three times in four starts in 1992 and is on a similar roll now. He has won three times in eight tournaments, and could have made it four victories had he not stumbled down in the Honda Classic.

Weir also has won three times in eight starts, capped off by his playoff victory in the Masters. The Canadian won only three times in his previous five years on tour.

Woods remains the most impressive. He has won three times in just six tournaments, and his worst finish was a tie for 15th in the Masters.

Don't forget about Ernie Els, who won the first two tournaments of the year in Hawaii -- the first time that's happened since 1989 -- and could have won at Hilton Head except for a sloppy finish. He was 4 over par on the last three holes, missing the playoff by three shots.

Els is playing the Houston Open this week. Should he win, it would mark the first time since 1982 that the PGA Tour had at least four guys with three victories apiece.

A year ago, 15 players won the first 16 tournaments, and the running joke was that the winners-only Mercedes Championships would have so many players they would have to go to a two-tee start.

Kapalua could have the smallest field on the PGA Tour next year.

"We're excited about the champions we have. We're just going to need a few more," said Gary Planos, Kapalua's vice president of operations.

Planos sends a gift and a note of congratulations each time someone qualifies for the Mercedes by winning a tour event.

He isn't making many trips to the post office these days.

In the playoffs

The five playoffs at this stage in the season are the most since 1992, and none of these overtimes could be classified as routine.

The only sudden-death playoff that required just one hole was won by a bogey -- Weir at Augusta National.

Weir won another playoff with a birdie at Riviera, but only after watching Charles Howell III drive into a treacherous bunker on No. 10, then escape with the best shot of the tournament by blasting out to 6 feet, then missing the putt.

Els looked like a beaten man in the Sony Open when he tried to drive the 10th hole at Waialae and was in such a tough predicament that he could only chip through the green. Then he holed a 55-foot birdie putt to beat a stunned Aaron Baddeley.

The other playoff took two days to finish.

Scott Hoch declared it was too dark to see the break on his 9-foot birdie putt at Doral. He returned Monday morning and realized the putt broke right -- not left. He made it, then beat Jim Furyk on the next hole with a birdie.

Two days before the Masters, Phil Mickelson was asked who would be the next left-hander to win a major.

"I can't tell if you're being facetious or if you want me to really answer that," he said, feeling as though he were being kicked around before the tournament even started. "I'm going to leave that one unanswered."

The answer came that Sunday: Weir.

Mickelson is still the best southpaw in golf with 21 victories. And he remains the best player to have never won a major, now 0-for-39 as a professional.

Anyone who thought Duval hit rock bottom didn't see the trap door.

Coming off a year in which he failed to win for the first time since 1996 and finished 80th on the money list, Duval opened his season with a 65 at the Bob Hope Classic.

Duval has made only one cut, a tie for 42nd at Riviera. He has broken 70 just four times (three of those rounds at the Hope). Twice he had to sign for an 80 or worse.

Duval is last among 177 players in ball-striking, which combines a player's ranking in total driving and greens in regulation.

After missing the cut at the Masters with rounds of 79-83, instead of cleaning out his locker, Duval went to the driving range and hit balls for more than an hour.

Strange, indeed.