By Lorne Rubenstein
GolfWeb contributing editor

While the Players Championship was on last weekend I was 14,000 ft. up in the Andean desert in Chile, far from any golf news. I didn't know that David Duval won the tournament until I returned to Santiago on Monday, and his winning score of only 3-under par 285 got my attention. That's tournament golf, folks -- as hard as it gets and as good as it gets.

Now I say this even though I didn't see a shot of the championship. Oh, I caught a couple of shots after it was all over on CNN's world sportscast, and it was obvious that the greens were rock-hard and that the golf ball was careening all over the place. I loved the little that I saw and as I write again from Santiago I'm licking my lips in anticipation of watching a tape of the tournament and then of attending the Masters next week. I hope the rough that the powers-that-be have grown on the course makes a difference.

Am I being sadistic here? I don't think so. In my opinion courses that are on the edge of being fair test a golfer in every way -- his swing, his ability to make the right decisions, his mental toughness when he gets the bad bounces. There's no such thing as a bad bounce in golf -- the ball should bounce because golf is a game played on the ground as well as in the air and so a player has to accept it can go here and there. And not always where he wants it to.

"There is nothing that is unfair as long as everybody has to play it, and everybody did," Phil Mickelson said about the killer conditions during the Players. "I wouldn't have it any other way."

Now, I don't say that every tournament on the PGA Tour should be set up crazy tough. But what's wrong with difficult course conditions more often? The players have been talking about wanting firmer and faster greens, and they got them at the Players Championship. Now I read that some think those greens bordered on the unfair, especially given the four-inch rough around them that kept the players from chipping or pitching the ball near the hole.

It must have been really frustrating for the golfers last week. Duval knew what was up -- or at least that the scores were going to be up. He said following his opening round 69 that he just didn't see low scores happening. They didn't. Good stuff, I say.

Look, why should the United States Golf Association be the only organization that sets its courses up almost maliciously, at least for the U.S. Open? The PGA Tour is the organization that runs the biggest and best and richest series of tournaments in the world. It was right that its own biggest event should insist that par matter. Come on, this wasn't the Bob Hope in the desert, was it?

Mickelson likes the killer conditions. (Allsport)

Okay, I know you'll say that we wouldn't have seen Duval shoot 59 had he played a tough track the last round of the Hope this year. Of course he wouldn't have shot such a low number. But as I said, I don't believe par should be the big deal every week. But for the big events -- yes, it should. It was exciting to watch as Duval showed just how mentally strong he was when he ripped that 5-iron six feet from the cup on the last hole in the desert, then holed the putt for his 59. Great stuff.

But tell me it wasn't just about as exciting to watch as Duval stepped up to the 17th tee at the Tournament Players Club last Sunday with a one-shot lead. He could have made anything on that hole. Payne Stewart knocked two balls in the water to make an eight on the hole that features the famous island green. Scott Gump, who finished second to Duval, hit his tee shot onto the green and watched as it bounced and zipped through the putting surface and into the water. What would Duval do?

That was the whole point, wasn't it? What would he do? The anticipation there had everything to do with the possibility that even Duval could get a hard bounce and go through the green into the water. Or maybe he would hit his wedge a tad fat and come up short and in the water. He would pay a big penalty because of the nature of Pete Dye's oft-maligned hole.

But it's a hole everybody loves to hate and it always does its job the final round of the Players Championship. This wasn't Duval against his closest challengers now. This was Duval -- golf's best for some time -- against golf's most terrifying hole down the stretch.

He was up to the task, wasn't he? He hit his wedge left of the hole that was cut in its customary position on the extreme right of the green, only a few feet from the water. Then he rolled in his six-foot birdie putt to take a two-shot lead to the final hole. Duval was divine -- he showed what he was made of.

Sure, I was somewhere thousands of miles away and I had no idea. But as soon as I heard he had won with the highest score since the Players Championship came to Sawgrass, I knew that the 17th played a role. And that the entire course was in many ways the winner.

"They want every shot to be a challenge and they want it hard and fast and tough and they have got it right there," Davis Love III said after the second round of the Players. "As soon as you start missing fairways, this is a frustrating golf course." Music to my ears, I assure you.

Love added that the tough conditions separate the field, and that it's easy for a player to lose his cool when things go awry as they inevitably do. Well, the best golfers find a way to keep their cool. That's championship stuff.

I'm sure hoping that Augusta National next week will force players to keep their cool. It usually does anyway, what with its roller-coaster, firm and speedway fast greens. Now let's see what some modest rough can do to a player's mental state. I can hardly wait. This time I won't be in the Andes. I'll be at Augusta, savoring every maddening moment.

Scott Gump's ball is wet on the 17th at Sawgrass. (Allsport)

How good is it going to be to see players react when some of their shots from Augusta's rough come out with no spin and tear through the greens into precarious chipping areas? Shakespeare's witches in Macbeth said that "foul is fair and fair is foul," and the playwright never hit a golf shot in his life. But the witches' seven magisterial, prognosticating words could be the theme for next week's Masters. They could have been the theme for the Players Championship.

Now let's see. How about some wind next week as well? Robert Trent Jones Jr. has always called wind "the invisible hazard." Wind will make Augusta National even more treacherous. Hey, maybe par will matter there as well, even with four par-5s that most players can reach in two shots -- two perfect shots, that is.

Ah, yes, perfection. It's an impossible goal in golf but every so often a player comes near it. That's what happened when Tiger Woods won the 1997 Masters with his 18-under-par total that gave him a 12-shot margin of victory. Hell, that's not a margin -- that's a country mile. Next week perfection could be par.

Last week Duval's game was perfection when he shot 3-under-par to win the Players Championship. His score was fully 21 shots higher than when Greg Norman won the 1994 Players Championship. That was perfection then and showed Norman at his best. Just goes to show you: Perfection is relative in golf.

Foul is fair and fair is foul. And sometimes par, or somewhere very near par, is perfection. I'm hoping that's the way things will be next week at the Masters. That's the way it was last week at the Players Championship. I missed the excitement and the anxiety and the anticipation, but I can taste those ingredients now, even from Chile.

So chill out, all you golf fans who crave birdies. Now is the time for the pain of the game. Now comes the season of the majors, where fairways and greens are hard as ice rinks, and brains as fried as omelets. If you want pin cushions, look elsewhere. If you want low scores, enter a member-guest.

Editor's note: The award-winning writer and GolfWeb Contributing Editor Lorne Rubenstein can be found every Thursday on GolfWeb.