NEW YORK — When Sugar Ray Leonard and Thomas Hearns fought to unify the welterweight title Sept. 16, 1981, nobody booed. When Keith Thurman and Danny Garcia went about the same hard business last night at the Barclays Center, the record crowd of 16,533 booed during the second half of the bout and after Thurman’s split decision was announced. The fans’ lustily voiced opinion was right on both counts.

Judge John McKaie saw it 116-112, and Joe Pasquale had it 115-113 for Thurman while judge Kevin Morgan scored the bout 115-113 for Garcia, as did the Herald. The crowd had no scorecards, but it clearly did not side with the majority at ringside.

Thurman’s post-fight interview in the ring was drowned out by an angry crowd that felt he had not done enough on a night when he seemed to spend the second half of the fight moving more than mixing.

It was eerily like the night Oscar De La Hoya took a similar approach to the final rounds of his unification fight with Felix Trinidad and managed to run his way out of a victory his fists seemed to have earned in the first eight rounds.

“The judges are judges,’’ Thurman said. “I thought I outboxed him. I thought it was a clear victory, but Danny came to fight. I knew when it was split and I had that wide spread, I knew it had to go to me.

“I was not giving the fight away. I felt like we had a nice lead, we could cool down. I felt like we were controlling the three-minute intervals every round. My defense was effective. He wasn’t landing.”

Certainly Garcia wasn’t landing the way he did in fights against more aggressive opponents Amir Khan and Lucas Matthysse, but the body punching he began midway through the fight seemed to take a significant toll on Thurman. The more Thurman was hit to the body and hip, the more he wanted to move and the less he wanted to throw his hands, a circumstance that left him circling and circling as the crowd booed louder and louder.

“I thought I did enough to win the fight,’’ Garcia insisted. “Keith ran half the fight. I thought I was the aggressor. I thought I pushed the pace, but it didn’t go my way. I was pushing the fight.’’

This odd bout was only the third time in boxing history two undefeated welterweight champions were meeting to unify the title, joining Leonard-Hearns and De La Hoya-Trinidad. If the crowd was ranking those fights, there is little question which one would have finished third.

At the opening bell, Thurman (28-0, 22 KOs) came out firing, landing several bombs, including a big left hand late in the round that rocked Garcia. Garcia (33-1, 19 KOs) quickly held on and survived, but Thurman’s aggressiveness and speed were problems.

Thurman continued his aggressive approach in the next two rounds, but he didn’t land anything more with authority. More important, he wildly missed a number of overhand rights that Garcia countered.

Garcia began to land with more consistency in Round 4 both to the body (and hip) of Thurman and with his jab. He also took a flush left to the chin from Thurman and didn’t flinch, a reminder to the WBA champion known as “One Time’’ that it would take more than one shot like that to buckle the iron-chinned Garcia.

Garcia continued to get to Thurman’s body, slipping under his wild and off-target hooks and drilling him in the ribs, then slipping away. No single punch hurt Thurman, but each was doing the kind of damage that is cumulative when it persists.

Garcia closed down the distance in Round 6, still scoring to the body but this time adding a long right hand to the face that snapped Thurman’s head back. Adjustments had been made by Garcia, and now Thurman had to find a way to counter them to get his advantage back.

In Rounds 7-9, he chose instead to keep his distance as the crowd began to boo because of the lack of action. With three rounds to go, the fight appeared even, Thurman’s initial aggressiveness having been blunted by Garcia’s body work but with neither man seemingly too anxious to push the pace to create a significant opening.

Late in Round 10, Garcia followed up a soft combination with a hard right to the body that caught Thurman as he was throwing, and a following left to the stomach bent him over with a pained look as the bell sounded.

Thurman was barely throwing, spending most of Round 11 circling and moving but seldom putting himself at risk. He spent most of the final round in the same manner, circling but rarely throwing as Garcia pursued him with minimal success. Garcia did land two more hard body shots, but in the end, they didn’t amount to quite enough to convince two judges who left the crowd as dissatisfied as Keith Thurman had.

PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. — Tim Tebow was astonishing yesterday in his debut in a Mets uniform at First Data Field. The only problem was it wasn’t for anything that normally astonishes you at the ballpark.

Ron Darling, the ex-Mets pitcher who now broadcasts their televised games on SNY, was astonished at what he saw for sure.

“That’s the first standing ovation I’ve ever seen for hitting into a double play,” Darling admitted after Tebow’s soft grounder to second base in the fourth inning led to a Mets run (but no RBI) and a burst of euphoria from a crowd that, when it came to Tebow, was pretty easy to please.

Red Sox starting pitcher Rick Porcello and Mets first base coach Tom Goodwin were equally astonished by Tebow. They were astonished when they saw him standing near the Red Sox’ on-deck circle as Porcello was warming up, a no-no of grave proportions in a game that takes itself as seriously as baseball.

“I didn’t know who that was back there,” Porcello said. “I thought that was the ball boy.”

Red Sox reliever Noe Ramirez was astonished, too, but not simply at that standing O Tebow got for sitting down after tapping Ramirez’ changeup into a double play.

“I saw his last round of BP,” said Ramirez, who was one of a large number of Red Sox who came out to watch Tebow swing. “Guys were curious. He’s been the talk of the town. The ball really came off his bat. We were pretty astonished.”

Being astonished can be the result of many things, you see. In Tebow’s case it was the result of a BP session where he hammered a number of balls to a pulp and a game in which he went 0-for-3, was twice called out looking at third strikes low in the zone that left him frozen and once was hit by a pitch in the shoulder that he brushed off like it was a cornerback from Florida State trying to stop him at the goal line.

None of that has anything to do with the former Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback’s ability to hit a baseball, because he only hit it twice, once foul and once into that standing ovation-inducing double play, and that is the concern raised by his presence in a Mets uniform.

After an All-America football career at Florida and a brief three-year NFL career that ended with Bill Belichick releasing him in the summer of 2014 because, well, he was not exactly a Marine Corps marksman when it came to throwing a football, Tebow is now trying to make it in baseball after a 12-year layoff. Many in the grand old game seem mighty irked by this hubris, grumbling that he’s making a mockery of our national pastime simply by trying to play again for the first time since high school.

After hitting .194 in the Arizona Fall League against mostly Double-A and Triple-A pitching with 20 strikeouts in 62 at bats, Tebow came to Port St. Lucie this spring like all the other kids chasing a dream. While he may never catch up with it because his long, hard swing is having trouble catching up to the fastball, what’s the harm in trying?

To purists, it’s being seen as an affront to the game or a blatant effort to sell Mets T-shirts with TEBOW 15 on the back (even though he had 97 on his back yesterday). But to those who have chased the dream themselves with mixed results, there was a softer way to view his willingness to still dream at 29.

“He’s not afraid of failure,” Sox manager John Farrell said of Tebow’s Don Quixotesque quest. “That’s a great attitude to have. Athletes are all vulnerable. For a guy who played at such a high profile in sports, for him to say, ‘I’m willing to take a run at this,’ I think it’s a pretty cool thing. We’ll see how it plays out. When you look at the raw power in BP, it’s pretty evident. He’s someone who obviously believes in himself.”

That was evident after his long first day was over. Not many guys go 0-for-3 with two strikeouts and conduct a press conference about it but there Tebow was, a smile on his face and an obvious willingness to not take himself too seriously while taking his longshot effort very seriously.

“As an athlete you can’t let one day define anything,” he said. “Some will make it the best day or the worst day depending on what happens but for me it’s just a day. I learned a lot. There’s a lot of things I’m trying to catch up on. How fast can you catch up?”

That was probably the most rational thing said about Tebow since signing with the Mets but just as significant was his laugh when asked about hovering too near the Sox’ on-deck circle.

“I thought you walk around because you’re a left-hander,” he said. “I found out you don’t do that.”

He laughed at that rookie mistake and explained he knows this will take both patience and effort to “put in the work to be the best I can be. I know that sounds cliche but it’s true.”

Whether Tim Tebow makes his dream come true, the one thing he made obvious yesterday, just as he has so many other times before in good times and in bad, is this: If you don’t like this kid it says more about you than it does about him.

FORT MYERS — Jerry Remy never thought he’d be here today, even before cancer tapped him on the chest for the fourth time in mid-December. But yesterday he sat in the Red Sox dugout at JetBlue Park for the first time this spring looking like he’d never left. Or ever wanted to.

In a sense, Remy never really has, going all the way back to his days in Somerset, when the thought of sitting in that dugout was a teenage fantasy played out each evening. It was that summer of 1967 when a lot of impossible dreams were being fulfilled all over New England. On front stoops, Little League fields and in old men’s dreams. The Sox were 100-1 shots who won the pennant and 50 years later they are still a boy’s dream for Remy.

“I was 14 or 15 years old, in the front yard throwing a tennis ball up against the steps in front of my front door, which drove my parents crazy because every time I missed it would hit the screen door and make a loud boom and the whole neighborhood would get upset,” Remy recalled as a warm sun shone down on him. “I remember being out there. I made up games. I was George Scott and Joe Foy, and I was Rico (Petrocelli), and I was Mike Andrews, and I was Yaz. I was all of them. Sitting there thinking, just being in love with the game.

“I listened to every game on the radio. To eventually play for them and then work for them, I’m pretty damn lucky. There’s a lot of kids that grew up in our neighborhood that would trade their lives in for my life anytime. So in many respects, it’s something I never dreamed of. I have to pinch myself every once in a while.”

After four bouts with cancer, many might say pinch yourself about what? But the 64-year-old Remy has become a guy who sees life a little differently now. He’s had his ups and well-chronicled downs, and a fourth cancer diagnosis on his right lung that came after a routine checkup at Mass. General last December was the latest shock.

Many things in life are eased by experience, but not in this case. One never gets accustomed to such news.

“Once you’ve had it the first time, especially where I’ve had it, it’s always on my mind,” Remy admitted. “It’s a month before I’ve got to go for my checkup and I start to get scared. Every time you go and get diagnosed with it, you kind of collapse a little bit. But you’ve got two options. (One) option is to move forward and do all you can do, or the other option isn’t very good. It’s not constantly on my mind, by no means, but it’s become part of my life.

“Cancer to me has always been the scariest word in the English language. It was always that way. I was afraid to go to a doctor, because I didn’t want to know if I had it. Finally when it hit me and I got it, I went whoa. It’s not something you get used to at all.”

Unlike cancer, broadcasting is something he got used to. After what he called a rocky start in 1988, the kid from Somerset settled in and today is as comforting to Sox fans as a familiar uncle.

Originally drafted into the Angels organization in 1971, he became their starting second baseman in 1975. Three years later, he was traded home and served in the same capacity for seven years for the Red Sox before a knee injury effectively ended his career on May 18, 1984.

When he left baseball, Remy knew he would never really leave. The other thing he knew was he’d never be in a broadcast booth. Not ever.

“No way,” he said. “Absolutely no way. I always thought when I played I’d end up coaching, which I did for a year, and then eventually manage.

“This opportunity presented itself when they split up NESN and needed somebody to analyze their games. They picked me because I was local and just recently retired. The first couple years, I was absolutely terrible. I hated it.

“But as I grew to understand television, I think that made the job like 80 percent easier, and then the baseball started to come out. . . . I remember games in spring training my first year with Ned Martin, and I didn’t know what the score was. I was horrible. I used to pray for days off, for rainouts.

“Then all of a sudden it clicked for me. There wasn’t a magic moment, but somehow I remember hearing from the truck, ‘Now that’s how you analyze,’ and I kind of built on that. But for the first two years, not good.”

Remy stuck with it because he wanted to be close to home with the team he’d once played for in his front yard, but he also knew why coaches and managers are hired. To be fired.

“If I go back to . . . managing or coaching, I’m going to get fired nine times,” he said. “I’m going to be all over the country, I’m going to be in winter ball, I’m going to be everywhere. There was stability in this position if it worked out, stability that I never expected to last 30 years.

“I’m very proud to be a member of the Red Sox for almost 40 years. I don’t think there’s been an analyst that’s done 30 years of Red Sox baseball, and I don’t think there’ll be another one. And that I’m very proud of, too.”

Cancer remains a battle he’s still fighting, even as he returns home to NESN. He wasn’t allowed to fly until this week and couldn’t get here fast enough, even though he won’t be doing a game for about two weeks. He still plans to handle his full 115-game schedule though and will do it without the cigarette that was once his constant accoutrement.

“Glad to be down here and put that stuff behind me in an atmosphere where I’m comfortable,” Remy said. “Change my mindset from what I’ve been going through the last four months and now doing what I love to do and that’s being around baseball.

“I haven’t had a smoke in a while. It’s like an alcoholic. You never say never. You take it one day at a time. I’m well aware. I joke about it, but this is no joke. I picked up a terrible habit when I was 16 years old and was never able to stop. I’m sure that’s why I have lung cancer. There are a lot of people who are not smokers that have lung cancer, but I’m quite sure that’s the reason I have it.”

Remy said when he got into professional baseball he thought it would be the end of smoking. In such a health environment, who would smoke? Much to his shock, everyone.

“The players, the coaches, the manager,” Remy recalled. “I thought, ‘terrific!’ Smoking was all over the place. That was an eye opener.”

So is the daily battle he’s come to accept and so too is life in the broadcast booth. A life he won’t give up without a fight.

“To be able to do this for 30 years is just mind-boggling,” Remy said. “Almost half my life I’ve been doing this, and more than half my life I’ve been in the organization. I’m a very lucky guy, as far as that goes. They’re probably going to have to tell me, ‘Hey, Remy, enough’s enough. We’ve had enough of your act.’ I don’t see myself telling them anytime soon.”

FORT MYERS — Sometimes, in situations like you find David Price and the Red Sox, it’s hard to tell if the news is good, bad or not news at all. Yesterday was one of those days.

The Sox’ $217,000,000 Man has not thrown a baseball since a brief simulated game on Feb. 26, a trend that continued yesterday. The next day Price complained to the team of elbow soreness, MRIs followed and he hasn’t touched a baseball since.

This is naturally somewhat stressful for the Sox and their fans since both are relying on what was supposed to be a superlative starting rotation to shoulder at least some of the predictable offensive drop off with the retirement of David Ortiz. Big Papi was supposed to be replaced by Big Pitching, but if Price continues unable to throw a baseball one has to wonder.

Yesterday manager John Farrell assured the media hordes that Price had regained full range of motion and had “advanced” to doing “plyometric exercises” that replicate his throwing motion. This sounded at least moderately encouraging until he added he was “unsure” when he would resume playing catch.

Playing catch? Somehow it sounded like a long way from “playing catch” to playing baseball but who knows? Maybe not even the Sox, which is its own worry.

“The pace continues to make improvements,” Farrell said in that way he has of saying nothing much but saying it well.

Farrell said Price was working with some sort of weighted ball on a trampoline, which sounded far more exotic than it probably is but at least a bounce in the right direction until he added “whether a ball is in his hand in the coming days he’s getting the (arm) movement.”

What good is the arm movement if he doesn’t have a ball in his hand? Not much unless he’s training for the Golden Gloves.

It has now been 13 days since Price last threw a baseball, which he will be paid $30 million to do this summer, so Farrell was asked how much longer before that happens. It seemed a logical question. His answer was “as far as actually a baseball . . . in the coming days.”

Is that the coming days like next week or the coming days like next year? Who knows? Thus one was left guessing.

Was it good news that Price’s arm was being put in motion via plyometrics? Probably so. But how good if a baseball in his hand can’t yet be part of it?

Farrell said the medical staff was “monitoring whatever swelling existed” and that he was not sure it was a concern if he played catch on “Sunday, Monday or Tuesday.”

Farrell assured the worried that Price was not in a situation that he would be back at ground zero because “nine (12 actually) days ago he was throwing 94 miles per hour. That’s not Day 1 of spring training.”

That seemed a valid point although it seemed to ignore the fact that after doing that he needed two MRIs, a Tylenol bottle or two and plyometrics just to get his arm back into its throwing motion. Maybe that’s not a big deal on March 13 but, well, on the encouragement meter it wasn’t exactly dancing in the street music.

What seems clear is that the Red Sox are in no rush to rush back their $217,000,000 (Fully Guaranteed) Man. Nor should they be. But what is worrisome is that Price’s tenuous situation is a reminder of how perilous it is to stake your future on starting pitchers because one minute you have them and the next you have a wall full of MRIs.

Steven Wright, the knuckleballer who hasn’t been right since he jammed his shoulder diving back to second base as a pinch runner last season, is scheduled to finally make his first spring training appearance on Monday, and Drew Pomeranz, who arrived in Boston after being traded for with a sore elbow and has struggled since, pitches for the first time Tuesday.

Meanwhile Rick Porcello, 2016 Cy Young Award winner, took a ball off his thumb two days ago in Port St Lucie and gave up three straight booming line drive hits thereafter before being removed. Farrell said he “felt better” and would pitch in a simulated game Monday in Fort Myers. Add them all together and you apparently have Chris Sale as the only utterly healthy starter the Sox have at the moment.

Does that matter? Well, like everything else yesterday, it depends on your perspective. According to Farrell, “we’re starting to get the regular rotation back in sync.”

That’s good but only so good until such time as the $217,000,000 Man can put a ball in his hand and throw it. Until then the news from Fort Myers is as good as you want to make it.

FORT MYERS — Chris Sale is making it easy to feel at ease with what he’s bringing to Boston next month by doing the simplest yet most difficult of things: throwing first-pitch strikes.

That was the case against almost every batter he faced yesterday in a four-inning, 56-pitch stint against the Tampa Bay Rays at JetBlue Park. His outing was a brief one because the Rays could do little with him but walk back to the dugout shaking their heads as he struck out five, allowed only one ball out of the infield and threw 46 strikes. To say he abused the Rays would be to underrate his performance.

Sale also kept Pablo Sandoval fully engaged as the third baseman handled three ground balls in those four innings, including starting a nifty double play that ended the second inning and making a nice play on a hard shot from Rickie Weeks Jr. in the fourth that garnered Panda a lusty ovation from the packed house of partisans.

But the largest cheer went to Sale, upon whose left arm many hopes are riding this year. Sale had been grumpy after his first outing of the spring last Monday, when he allowed four hits and two runs (one earned) in two innings against the Astros. But there was no reason to grumble yesterday as he got on top of nearly every batter with a first-pitch strike.

He made the rest of it look easy after that, especially in the opening inning when he struck out the side, two of the three on called third strikes that had all the Rays but Evan Longoria, who singled, dragging their bats back to the dugout.

“I had a good combination of everything,” Sale said. “I was able to command all of my pitches for strikes and had command up and down.”

He also had command of the Rays in large part because he gave them no room to breathe. He pitched inside, which is his wont, and most importantly he got up on them with what is maybe baseball’s most important pitch.

“What doesn’t change from spring training to the World Series is the basic facts of baseball — strike one goes a long way,” manager John Farrell said when asked about Sale. “Let’s not lose sight of the pitcher’s first job — strike one.”

Sale wasted no time doing that part of the job batter after batter, thus putting the Rays hitters back on their heels and allowing him and catcher Sandy Leon a wide range of ways to be rid of them after that. It’s still early spring of course, but this was the kind of commanding performance that will be expected of Sale all summer. He knows it. The Red Sox know it. And the fans will demand it.

It’s why Red Sox swami of personnel, Dave Dombrowski, became the first to trade major league baseball’s No. 1 prospect away in the past 25 years. When the announcement came in December that the Sox had sent four young prospects to Chicago for Sale, some of the natives were restless because among them was Yoan Moncada, who nearly everyone in baseball has concluded is a “can’t miss” kind of player.

Perhaps so, but Sale is a “can miss” pitcher, meaning he can make a lot of bats miss baseballs. He’s done that consistently enough to have been an American League All-Star each of the past five seasons, so sending two unproven but highly regarded prospects (the other being pitcher Michael Kopech) plus two more to Chicago for Sale, while a gamble, seemed one worth taking.

“When you’re putting together a club, the ideal scenarios don’t always happen,” Dombrowski said yesterday. “You don’t trade for someone like Sale and get to give away four players you don’t like.”

In other words, to acquire an arm as live as Sale’s has been, and was again yesterday, there is an inherent cost and a natural risk. Every move like this is a gamble and so sets people on edge, but Sale’s commanding performance yesterday will set everyone watching at ease for the moment, including him.

“There was a great flow to the game,” Sale said. “It’s not just the results. My focus was better (than against the Astros). I threw a lot of strikes. I had a stupid walk when I was 0-2, too.”

That Sale would mention losing leadoff man Tim Beckham after being up on him 0-2 says more than a little about his competitive fires, which have been known to burn bright. He acknowledged that yesterday after Farrell compared him to a pitching version of Dustin Pedroia.

“I’ve always been like that,” Sale said. “I don’t know if I love to win or just hate to lose, but when there’s something on the line I like to win.”

So do Red Sox fans. So if Chris Sale keeps pitching anywhere near like he did yesterday, they should both be well satisfied this summer.

ORLANDO, Fla. — They stood like silent sentinels for a moment, each holding their own memories of him in their hearts. Then the sharp crack of one drive after another being launched into the air echoed across the practice range at Arnold Palmer’s Bay Hill Club yesterday, a golfing 21-gun salute to a King.

A line of PGA Tour pros stretched from one end of the range to the other, each driving a ball as hard as a man could. Not another sound was heard as first one line of his golfing offspring and then another ripped those balls, one by one, into the air the way Arnie once said his Pap, Milfred “Deacon” Palmer, told him to when he was 8.

“Hit it hard, boy,” Palmer’s daddy advised. “Go find it and hit it hard again.”

That is how Arnold Palmer always played golf and sometimes it cost him, but it also made him the savior of the game and nothing less than the patron saint to those who play it today. And that’s how the pros honoring his memory at the annual Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill played it yesterday, six months after his passing at age 87. They hit it hard, boy. Then the next guy hit it hard again.

That was the golf shot Palmer loved best. Not just driving the ball but ripping any shot he felt needed it. As the great Gene Littler, a Hall of Fame contemporary of Palmer’s, once put it, “When he hits the ball, the earth shakes.”

All the golf world did whenever he passed by, right to the end. Then it stopped for a moment when the inevitable came last Sept. 25 and Arnold Palmer passed away. Now the tournament that bore his name for the past 38 years is going on without him but yesterday, as the crack of those drivers sent one ball after another flying into the air before a Coast Guard helicopter commemorating his military service lifted off and flew away as if taking Palmer with it. It was as if he was still hovering over the place.

His clubs stood right behind the practice range in his signature bag, resting under a rainbow-colored umbrella that had become his logo. While the No. 1 player in the world, Dustin Johnson, chose to skip the event, the tournament has attracted a strong field, including the Nos. 2, 3, 4 and 5 players: Jason Day, Rory McIlroy, Hideki Matsuyama and Henrik Stenson.

Each is here to win, of course, all with an eye of preparing themselves for next month’s Masters. But they had come for more than that. They had come to pay homage to the man who is the reason golf became adopted by the masses, a transformation that has helped make them all rich.

Palmer, too, became a multi-millionaire more from his post-career business ventures than his actual golf earnings, but everything he had came from the sport he began playing when his father first showed him how to grip a club at age 3. He never changed it because, he once said, “He told me what to do and I did it and I did it as fast as I could get it done. That included playing golf.”

He did it, and most everything else he tried, so well that among McIlroy’s most cherished possessions are the letters Palmer wrote to him and many other pros after they won a tournament. The last one he received came after McIlroy had won the Deutsche Bank at TPC Boston last Labor Day weekend, less than three weeks before Palmer died.

“Any time you win a golf tournament or do anything of note, the one really classy thing that both Arnie and Jack Nicklaus do is write you a letter,” McIlroy said yesterday. “So the first letter I ever received from Arnold was after I won Quail Hollow in 2010, my first event on the PGA Tour.

“Then basically after every win since I’ve gotten a letter from him. I think he sent me a letter after I won Deutsche Bank last year, which was a week or 10 days before he passed, so it might have been one of the last letters he ever wrote. That means a lot to me.

“I remember getting that letter after I won the U.S. Open from Arnold and when he said you’re now in a position where you have a responsibility, it hits home with you. I framed every one of them. They’re all in my office at home. They mean a lot to me.”

Surely they do but not as much as Arnold Palmer meant to golf. He was Tiger before Tiger and was still Tiger after Tiger. He had what only a few of the greatest of great athletes possess. Arnold Palmer had staying power and it wasn’t because he won the most tournaments, because he did not. It wasn’t because he won the most majors either, because he did not.

What Arnold Palmer won was why thousands stood silently yesterday as those balls flew off, one by one. Arnold won the people.

He was the working class hero of a sport that is anything but working class, his massive hands and forearms and his everyman approach to not only sport but to celebrity always making the average guy feel as if they had their own warrior out there on those country-club courses so few of them would ever set foot on.

“Jack won majors for 25 years; I won them for 20; Arnold won them for six,” Hall of Famer Gary Player told longtime golf writer Larry Dorman once. “But because he was so charismatic, because he did so much for golf, because the people loved him so dearly, they thought he was still winning. And, you know what? He was.”

Yesterday, Arnold Palmer won one last time as those balls cut through the air, one after another. Every ball was hit the way his Pap told him to do it.

They hit ’em hard for Arnie, boy. Then the next guy hit it hard again.

ORLANDO, Fla. — Golf is often the game of “almost” or “just barely.” For Keegan Bradley yesterday it was both.

The 2011 PGA champion’s opening-round 71 at the Arnold Palmer Invitational was good enough to leave him only 4 shots behind the leaders, Emiliano Grillo and Matthew Fitzpatrick, but troubling enough that he said he was “bummed” after it was over. He had good reason to be.

Bradley was sitting at 3-under par and in second place through 11 holes, 2 shots back with plenty of time left to do some damage. And so he did, but mostly to himself.

“I’m bummed out,” he admitted after bogeying three of the final five holes (which for him was Nos. 5, 7 and 9 on the Bay Hill course) to drop to T20 on the leaderboard. “I feel like I’m ready. I’m striking the ball well but I’m bummed the way I finished today. I’m going to go hit some balls on the range.”

It was after 6 p.m. when Bradley kissed his wife Jillian goodbye, grabbed a full bucket of balls and trudged off to try and right the few things that had gone wrong over those final five holes. He was not alone.

Right next to him was one of the three best players in the world, Rory McIlroy, who would have gladly traded his day for Bradley’s. McIlroy, playing in only his second event since fracturing a rib in January, had five bogeys and a double bogey to finish 2-over and tied for 58th place. It was not where either of them wanted to be, but worse for McIlroy.

“Very disappointing,” he said of his 74. “I didn’t hit the ball really the way I wanted. I lost a few shots to the right. Put myself out of position quite a few times. Going to go work on a couple of things on the range tonight and hopefully straighten it out for tomorrow.”

The range is the haven for all golfers, the place where they can make bad good and make good better. It is where they go to solve problems or insure they won’t have any.

Last night both McIlroy and Bradley pounded ball after ball in search of an answer after a day that was particularly frustrating for Bradley because he “just barely” missed a round that was “almost” commanding.

Such is life in professional golf, where the margin of error is as thin as it is for a neurosurgeon. You don’t have to be off by much for problems to arise and that’s what happened after Bradley’s birdie putt on the sixth hole erased a bogey on No. 5 and again put him 2 shots off the lead with the 199-yard par-3 seventh on the horizon.

It was a hole where he hoped to make something happen and he did. Just not what he wanted to have happen.

“I don’t know what happened there,” Bradley joked when asked how a long birdie putt after a smoking tee shot came up so far short that it left him with a 10- to 12-footer for par, which just slid by the hole. Just like that he was back in bogeyville for the second time in three holes, which is not where you want to be because it’s the kind of slip that can turn a good day into home on the range.

When Bradley got to the ninth hole, which was the closing hole of his opening round, a great second shot that had the gallery applauding left him on the back left side with a long putt for birdie and what looked like a sure par at the minimum. Of course, nothing is sure in golf and Bradley’s par putt that hit the lip and slipped out proved it.

“I made a good putt on the last hole,” Bradley said. “I don’t know how it didn’t go in.”

His point was well taken, but it didn’t go in so his day ended at 1-under instead of 2- or 3-under, leaving him with work to do not only today but last night as he pounded balls on the range sandwiched between McIlroy and Vijay Singh, who hits more range balls than Ranger Rick.

Despite the momentary disappointment of what might have been, Bradley has three top-10 finishes already this year (two dating back to the fall shoulder season) and nearly a million dollars in the bank. He knew things could have been better but perhaps more importantly he realized regardless of the way things ended up he’s sitting where McIlroy would have loved to be, but wasn’t.

“I’ll take the positive from this,” Bradley said. “I like where I am. It is fun to have a chance to contend.”

Keegan Bradley “almost” had a chance to do more than that yesterday, but today’s a new day. A day with more than “just barely” a chance to put himself in position to do some damage this weekend.

ORLANDO, Fla. — Rory McIlroy is playing at the Arnold Palmer Invitational this week for the same reason Jordan Spieth and Dustin Johnson are not. They’re all trying to ready themselves for next month’s Masters.

This first API without its namesake has become a special one to many on Tour yet Arnold would have understood that for the game’s greatest players it is always about peaking for the four majors — the Masters, U.S. Open, the British Open and the PGA. That means sometimes you play Arnie’s tournament and sometimes you don’t because the majors are where greatness is born and reputations are made or broken. While some players may believe they have to play to be ready, others think rest at the right moment will provide the best chance to wear the green jacket that symbolizes golf’s dream fulfilled.

Winning any tournament is what it’s about for the bulk of Tour pros but winning majors is what it’s about for those who seek greatness. McIlroy has been one of the latter since he began denting his mother’s dryer with chip shots at the age of 3.

Long “destined’’ to become golf’s next big thing, the 27-year-old from Northern Ireland joined Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods as the only golfers to win three majors by the age of 25 and now needs only the Masters to claim the career Grand Slam, a feat achieved by only five golfers in history.

To join Woods, Nicklaus, Ben Hogan, Gary Player and Gene Sarazen would put McIlroy among the greatest who ever played so when he arrived here this week it was with two purposes. He was here to pay homage to the passing of golf’s King, but also to hone himself for the year’s biggest tournament, which is not the API.

“You’re always trying to figure out the best way to peak for (major) tournaments,’’ McIlroy said. “It’s a very inexact science. Going into Augusta or the U.S. Open or whatever, you know the shots you’re going to need and you practice those and try to make yourself as comfortable as possible with those shots. When you do that and you’re 100 percent confident in practice, it usually translates on to the golf course.

“I’ve played the week before Augusta (and) I haven’t. I played the week before majors I’ve won, haven’t played the week before majors I’ve won. I don’t know if that’s been a good thing or a bad thing. I’m always trying to mix it up and change.’’

McIlroy is recovering from a January rib fracture and working to play his way back into contention, a process begun two weeks ago in his first outing of the year at the WGC-Mexico. He finished tied for seventh and was in contention on Saturday and Sunday, which he believes helped ready him for the Masters. He’d be happier had he duplicated that here but he did not, shooting 1-under 71 yesterday to make the cut at 1-over but 11 shots off the lead. Yet while winning the API carries its own reward, winning next month was the real point of being here.

“I sort of feel a little bit like what Phil (Mickelson) goes through when he goes to the U.S. Open, but at the same time I haven’t finished second at Augusta six times (as Phil has at the Open),’’ McIlroy said. “I can only imagine what goes through his head when he turns up at a U.S. Open.

“The people around me must hate me the week before Augusta because I turn into someone that I don’t even like. It’s a tough one, but look, it’s the biggest tournament of the year for me, for obvious reasons. I’ve never made any secrets about that.

“It should be the same like no matter if it’s that golf course (or not). I’m playing against the same guys that I’ve beaten before at the biggest tournaments in the world and there’s no reason why I shouldn’t be able to do it again. If I can keep that mindset and try to keep it as simple as possible, and keep it fun, I think that’s the thing as well.

“You’re getting to play Augusta. You’re getting to play at least six rounds around there. Who else gets to do that? That’s pretty cool in itself. Try not to put too much attention on the whole thing and just go play.’’

Noble thought but as he learned in 2011, the Masters plays you more than you play it. That’s what happened six years ago when, with his moment looming, it bit him hard.

McIlroy held a 4-shot lead when he teed off Sunday afternoon but triple bogeyed No. 10, putting his tee shot so far behind a cabin to his left no one could remember another pro ever playing a shot from there. That set the stage for a 43 on the back nine and a final-round 80 to finish tied for 15th.

No golfer had ever had so bad a final round when holding the Masters lead, a collapse not easily forgotten. But when the subject came up this week McIlroy showed that while he may not have yet won the Masters he’s already the master of perspective.

“Once I got past the 10th hole in 2012 and the first round, I was done with it,’’ he said. “I looked over, saw where I hit it, had a bit of a laugh and that was it. For me it was a huge learning experience.’’

One of the subtle things he learned was that keeping up with the Joneses is as unwise for golfers as it is for the rest of us.

“I played with Angel Cabrera that day and I feel like I’m a quick player but he was ridiculously quick,’’ McIlroy recalled. “I sort of learned don’t let others dictate the pace you play. That can have a detrimental effect.

“(Losing) still stings. I think about what could have been and if that hadn’t have went wrong I wouldn’t have to answer the questions I have to answer at this time of the year every year until I win one, but at the same time I’ve moved on and won majors and made a pretty good career for myself since. Hopefully when I get myself in that position again I’m going to do better.’’

That’s the main reason he’s playing here this week — to give himself that chance at Augusta.

ORLANDO, Fla. — Saturday is moving day on the PGA Tour and the biggest moves made at the Arnold Palmer Invitational yesterday were by the biggest names. For a sport in need of a new superstar it was a shot in the backswing for golf.

On the same day a report came out that slowly unraveling Tiger Woods had yet to play a practice round since failing to make the cut at the Farmers Insurance Open in late January and likely would miss the Masters for the third time in the past four years because of persistent back problems, Rory McIlroy and Rickie Fowler came from back in the pack to move within 5 and 6 shots respectively of the lead after two days of struggles.

Fowler started his day at 2-over for the tournament, 12 shots behind the leader and McIlroy was at 1-over and 11 behind but after both shot red-hot 7-unders at Bay Hill, they were the two biggest names on the board by nightfall. In fact, they were probably the only recognizable ones there for anyone but the most golf-obsessed among us.

Charley Hoffman ring a bell? How about Emiliano Grillo, who is an Argentine touring pro, not a new restaurant in East Cambridge. What of Harold Varner III or Tyrrell Hatton? You may have heard of Adam Hadwin but probably only because he won last week at the Valspar and went out and birdied four of the first six holes yesterday to put himself in position to win back-to-back titles.

But the big story was that McIlroy and Fowler, two of the most popular young golfers on the planet, shot themselves into position to challenge at a time when the sport could use it. McIlroy has yet to win this year but has only two starts because of a January rib injury while Fowler won the Honda Classic last month and is now in position to win a second time in the same calendar year for the second time in three years. A win here won’t make them what Tiger was but it would remind the sporting world that golf still has faces worth watching.

With Woods long absent and unlikely to ever return to the dominance that made golf a must watch event every time he was in the field, the sport needs someone to become its new standard bearer. McIlroy, with four major championships already on his resume at 27, remains the most likely to do it but Fowler has long been a favorite of young fans more for his multi-hued and often electric-colored clothing than for winning.

You can’t go to a tournament with Fowler in the field without seeing some 12-year-old decked out in orange golfing gear. To see both names in contention today would certainly have made the tournament’s namesake give his trademark thumbs up.

This turn of events was particularly unlikely for Fowler, who was not only 12 shots off the lead when his day began but double bogeyed the third hole to fall farther back. Seven birdies and an eagle later he’d carded an unlikely but welcomed 65 that was greatly aided by a phenomenal shot out of the edge of some water on 11 that allowed him to save par and get rolling toward the top of the leaderboard.

“The up-and-down at 11 definitely kept the round going and gave me a kind of little boost going into the next few holes,’’ Fowler said. “Just had to play not a perfect round but just hit my spots and don’t make any serious mistakes.

“Eleven could have turned into a 5 or a 6 pretty quickly but I got a little bit of a break with my ball in the shallow end of the water and I was able to take advantage of that. I knew I had some birdies (chances) after that. It was nice to take advantage of a couple of those opportunities.’’

After shooting an opening-round 74 that was 2-over par, McIlroy rallied slightly Friday and yesterday felt something might be brewing as he warmed up on the driving range. As things turned out it was much more than a spot of tea for the Ulsterman.

“My timing’s just been a little bit off this week,’’ McIlroy said. “I’ve been sort of throwing myself at it and getting a little ahead of it and missing a few to the right.

“My timing was a bit better (yesterday) starting from the warmup on the range. Thankfully it transferred out on to the course. To be starting (yesterday) at 1-over par and end up at 6-under for the tournament is great. I can’t control what the guys do out there but if I can be within 5 or 6 of the lead I’d be pretty happy.’’

Today he is but not as happy as NBC, which is broadcasting the tournament, or the suits who are running the game without a Tiger in their tank or on their leaderboard anymore.

ORLANDO, Fla. — When a tournament is so closely attached to one man, his passing makes one wonder what the future holds. Not so long ago, Marc Leishman was wondering about the future as well … his family’s.

The Arnold Palmer Invitational concluded yesterday for the first time without Arnie waiting at the 18th green to greet the winner with the thumbs-up sign that was his trademark. Having passed away last September, Palmer’s memory and his love for golf hung over the tournament all week. After it was over the winner had his own set of memories that had little to do with golf.

That winner turned out to be the little known Leishman, who held off a late charge that was fitting of Arnie himself by one of the best players in the world to win for the first time in five years. Former World No. 1 Rory McIlroy was 5 shots off the lead when the day began but nearly eagled 16 to make it all up with a tremendous shot around a tree and over water. That would have given him the lead with two holes to play but he had to settle for birdie and a temporary tie at the top that didn’t last long because Leishman did make eagle there, holing a 51-foot putt for what became his victory margin.

“I actually hit that putt on Tuesday and missed it 3 feet left,’’ Leishman said. “I remembered I’d missed that putt left so I backed off, adjusted my read about 2 feet and made it. Practice pays off.’’

McIlroy felt much the same way despite falling 2 shots short of victory. This was only his second tournament since fracturing a rib in January and in both he’s finished inside the top 10, closing in on the form he hopes to have honed when he arrives at Augusta for the Masters in three weeks.

“I made a run,’’ said McIlroy, whose closing 65-69 on the weekend after a slow start left him tied for fourth. “I struggled the first two days but found it a bit on the weekend. I gave it a good run (yesterday).’’

Leishman’s eagle on 16 allowed him to pass the original leaders, Charley Hoffman and Kevin Kisner, who opened the day 11-under par and 3 clear of Leishman. Although at one point Kisner got to 13-under, he could not maintain that pace and the closer McIlroy closed in on the leaders the more they seemed to waver.

While they were unraveling, Leishman was hovering just below the radar, close enough that if he got a break he could pass them all but not really in the conversation because of McIlroy’s long shadow.

But once he canned that putt on 16, Leishman was being sized for the winner’s red cardigan sweater he would ultimately wear as he walked into the media tent with his family in tow.

Leishman’s only Tour victory came five years ago at the Travelers so he had a lot on the line after he pulled his drive and then hit his second shot short of the green on 18 with Kisner still only a shot behind and waiting at the 18th tee for him to finish.

Kisner’s tee shot ended up in the left rough as Leishman hit a beautiful 45-foot approach that left him with a 3-foot par putt. He holed it and walked off leading by 1 with a trip to the Masters depending on what Kisner and Hoffman did next. It was the kind of tight finish Palmer would have savored.

Kisner’s second shot was a poor one as well and Hoffman left himself a long birdie putt on a hole he’d birdied each of the previous three days. On Saturday, he canned a 75-foot putt to do it, a putt he admitted had a 1 percent chance of going in. He left himself better odds yesterday but not good enough, while Kisner had to can his third shot from a greenside bunker to force a playoff.

Both failed to make birdie and so the strapping Australian had a win that was particularly sweet because he shared it with his wife, Audrey, who two years ago suffered acute respiratory distress and was induced into a coma.

Leishman left Augusta to be at her side as she slipped into toxic shock and was told she had only a 5 percent chance of recovery. At the time golf was the furthest thing from his mind and even yesterday victory came with more than a new sweater and a $1.56 million paycheck. It came with hard-earned perspective on golf and life.

“It certainly changes your perspective on life going through something like that,’’ Leishman said. “I want to do well but it makes golf less important. It’s not life and death. We’ve been in that situation. If you’re missing a 4-footer it’s not fun, but you can make a 40-footer on the next. You certainly do appreciate the good times a lot more and appreciate just everything.

“It’s a huge honor to win this event on a year when we’re honoring such a great man. Sad to be the first guy to walk off 18 and not be greeted by Arnold Palmer but it’s been an unbelievable week for me.’’

One that will send him back to the Masters with a new perspective on that as well.

This is a season of uncertainty and nowhere is that truer than on the frozen ice upon which the Bruins have been slipping and the soft grass of Fort Myers where the Red Sox are trying to figure out when their $30 million a year pitcher will throw a baseball again. As someone in the coaching business once said, “This is not what we’re looking for.”

For the Bruins, their recent slide back to what they’d been most of the season, which is to say a mediocre hockey club, has come as a shock to some. Those are people who also believe in the tooth fairy.

The fact of the matter is, was, and will remain so until the front office actually does something meaningful about it. Claude Julien couldn’t finish for his players and neither can Bruce Cassidy. Coaches coach, but on game nights, they mostly watch like the rest of us. Unfortunately, lately, the Bruins have been watching as well.

Losers of four straight going into last night’s critical game with the Islanders, who were tied with them (with one game in hand) in the battle for the final playoff spot, the Bruins were either cracking under pressure — as they did at the end of the previous two seasons — or returning to their mean. Either is not good for fans, or for Don Sweeney and Cam Neely.

When Cassidy first replaced Julien last month, he came with a bounce in his step and put one in the Bruins’ as well. They won 12 of 15, primarily by pressing far more aggressively on offense than Julien would have ever thought wise. This resulted in defensemen getting off good shots from low in the zone and an emphasis on transitional offense over stay-at-home defense.

This caught their opponents by surprise for a minute, but Cassidy’s system has now been seen 19 times and it appears his peers are catching on to what the Bruins have become. While that is surely true, there is more afoot than that. What truly is happening is a mediocre team, what Bruins’ management left Julien with the past three years, is returning to its middling norm.

The Bruins collapsed at the end the last two years and failed to make the playoffs, but it was close. This year, the same thing is happening. Whether they make it or not, it’s going to be close because that is what their talent dictates. They are a middle-of-the-pack team, and changing coaches and playing styles wasn’t going to change that. In the end, it is the men on the bench, not the one behind it, who decides the spoked-B’s fate.

Julien is in Montreal, where he took over a struggling Canadians team that had gone 1-5-1 in February at the time of his arrival. It’s 10-6 since, but at one point won six straight just as Cassidy’s Bruins won seven of eight. Neither team was that dominant, so each ultimately returned to its norm.

Only problem with that is Montreal’s norm has been atop the Atlantic Division all season, while the Bruins have hovered at hockey’s version of the Mendoza Line for three years. With eight games to go, that’s still where they reside.

Neely and Sweeney can claim all they want that their team has more talent than it has displayed, but in sports you are what your record says you are. What it says of this team is it’s the same as its two predecessors. No better. No worse.

Maybe a coaching change was needed, but coaches don’t win many games. Players do, and until the Bruins find more of them, especially ones who can finish — hello Tyler Seguin — mediocrity will be their middle name.

Meanwhile, there is angst of a different sort at the Fort. While the Bruins are coming to the wire, the Red Sox are readying to toe it, yet already anxiety rules because of two missing Davids: Ortiz and Price.

Ortiz’ retirement means reduced run production. That doesn’t mean the Sox don’t have a solid lineup that will score, but you don’t just replace all Ortiz meant overnight.

That’s why the Sox loaded up on high-priced pitching. Chris Sale is a bargain as far as aces go, earning only about $12 million this season, but Price’s price is not. He’s become a man with a $30-million contract and a two-bit elbow, which means it’s time for antacid pills for John Farrell and Dave Dombrowski.

Price’s arm strength is below where it was when spring training began, and he’ll be on the DL well into May at least. For a team building around pitching, that’s troubling news.

Despite that, you’d still rather be a Sox fan at the moment than a B’s backer. The Sox have all summer before they reach where the Bruins stand today, which is the crossroads of another failed season, regardless of who is standing behind the bench.

If, when it’s all said and done, Bruce Cassidy and the Bruins go home while Claude Julien and the Canadians skate deep into the playoffs, who will Bruins’ management blame next?

How about the players for once? And the people who picked them.

PHOENIX — It has long been said that, like alumni of great college football programs, Raiders fans travel well. Now they have the opportunity.

Yesterday, NFL owners voted 31-1 to allow one of the most storied and hallowed names in pro football history to disappear. Around 1:30 p.m. Eastern time, the Oakland Raiders died.

Sure they’ll wear the silver and black and carry the Oakland Raiders name for two or three more years while their new state-of-the-art home is being built very likely on 67 acres of desert just across the street from Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino on the edge of Las Vegas. But for the second, and likely final, time in their history, what the great writer Gertrude Stein once said of Oakland is true, at least when it comes to the Raiders.

“There is no there there,’’ she wrote of Oakland in her 1937 autobiography, “Everybody’s Autobiography.” Certainly there are no Oakland Raiders there anymore. Everybody’s gone. Or soon will be.

Whether Raiders fans will make eight trips a year to the gaming capital of the world to root for laundry remains to be seen. The larger short-term problem is will they make the trip to the weather-beaten, old ballpark in Oakland, where they made so much history in the days of the Mad Bomber, the Snake, the Stork and the Darth Vader of the NFL anymore? That remains to be seen, too.

Darth’s son, Mark Davis, is, in the end, the man who pulled the plug on Oakland. That now is his only legacy. To his credit, he did it reluctantly, and only after a decade-long search begun by his father, Al, to find a stadium solution for a team whose home had become overgrown and outdated.

The city of Oakland, county of Alameda and state of California all are a little short of cash. Broke, actually. They never had the money to give the Raiders the kind of glittering new house Vegas will provide, and in today’s NFL, the stadium deal is more important than the players because that’s where owners make their real money.

“These are difficult decisions,” said sheepish Pittsburgh Steelers president Art Rooney II, who was on the relocation committee. “I think that anybody who has visited Oakland and played a game there in the last couple of years understands the stadium situation there was difficult at best. And so we needed a solution. I think that we did wait a considerable amount of time to see if a plan could be developed to keep the team in Oakland. It couldn’t.

“The future of the Raiders can be much more solid playing in a first-class stadium. And so we are happy that the Raiders are going to have a home for the long term.”

He didn’t mention what really made the owners happy. In 14 months, three NFL teams have relocated, the Rams and Chargers to Los Angeles, and now the Raiders to Sin City. Each owner will receive $53 million in relocation fees, meaning simply for putting their hand up, not to mention out, they will be handed $1.59 billion in ransom money. The fact that only Stephen Ross, owner of the Miami Dolphins, voted no on the Raiders’ relocation indicates he either can’t count or realized more relocation ransom was creating a tax problem he didn’t need.

Davis the Younger is now not only in hock to his mother, who sold him her 40 percent interest in the team for an undisclosed price after his father passed away, but is on the hook for a level of debt unprecedented in the NFL. After Sands casino owner Sheldon Adelson pulled his offer to loan Davis $650 million to help finance the stadium deal in exchange for a piece of the team, Bank of America agreed to lend him that sum, and the league reportedly kicked in another $200 million of the $500 million Davis has agreed to add to finance a proposed $1.49 billion stadium with a retractable roof.

There is another $750 million in public funding approved by the state of Nevada, but that will come from a new Clark County hotel tax, meaning some shlump from Singapore in town to play craps will also be paying for the Raiders’ stadium. So where does this leave Mark Davis?

In debt up to his Prince Valiant haircut and in danger of losing the team his father built if he can’t pull off some serious financial sleight of hand.

That debt might be more than a billion dollars before the Raiders play their first game there in 2019 or 2020.

What we have here sounds a lot like what happened to Nevada real estate in 2008, when the economy tanked and all those subprime loans crapped out. It went under water, which in the desert isn’t that easy to do.

Do the math. Davis will likely be more than a billion dollars in debt while owning only 40 percent of a team presently valued at $1.43 billion by Forbes magazine. Let’s say the club’s value skyrockets despite the fact it’s moving to the 40th-ranked TV market in the country from the sixth and reaches, oh, $2 billion after some fantastic naming rights deal. That would mean Mark Davis owed $1 billion but only owns, at best, 40 percent of the team, which means about $800 million in equity.

In other words, he’s under water.

Far be it from me to be of a conspiratorial bent, but if some of his NFL “partners’’ want him out, which sources insist many of them do, this is not a deal he signed yesterday. It’s a death warrant.

It’s a trap that cost Oakland the Raiders today but maybe the Davis family the Raiders in the not-too-distant future.

PHOENIX — I sat down for breakfast yesterday with Bill Belichick. He seemed kind of distant.

He and his fellow coaches had come out west to join their bosses, as well as the straw bosses who run the NFL, for the annual league meetings. That’s where members of the rules committee annually conspire with commissioner Roger Goodell against the Patriots. Bill knows this better than the rest of us, but he was kind of mum on the subject.

When I went to charm school, one thing I was taught was the best way to get a conversation going is to break the ice with small talk. So I asked something I was sure a lot of people back in New England were wondering about since Super Bowl LI ended with Tom Brady’s jersey inside some Mexican editor’s sports coat.

“How come nobody stole your hoodie?” I asked.

Not wanting to cause an international incident by getting into a beef with Mexico over some dirty laundry, Bill thought it best not to comment. Who could blame him with a wall going up and all.

I did wonder what he might think the hoodie was worth on the black market if Brady’s soiled game jersey was valued at $500,000, but I didn’t ask. Why pry?

Instead I did it the way it’s done these days. I spoke to one of the FOBs instead, who insisted, “A dollar more than Brady’s!” Of course. Who would quarrel with a spokesman from a society more secretive than the Freemasons? Not me. Back to my oatmeal.

Breakfast at 6:45 a.m. is a tad early by sportswriter’s standards, but according to deeply held beliefs in New England, Bill usually would have had lunch by now as well as done hot yoga, a Zumba class, watched tape of 12 college seniors and every AFC East opponent’s games since 1971, balanced his salary cap, worked on variations of the Pythagorean theorem and taken 100 throws right-handed and 100 lefty with his Paul Rabil-model lacrosse stick. No wonder the guy was kind of quiet.

Our silent rendezvous yesterday was in a hotel where it costs $11 for a coffee, unless you want cream. Then it’s $17. That’ll put a damper on conversation, not to mention your appetite, so it was kind of quiet at the table. But the morning before, his boss, Bob Kraft, said he hoped Belichick coached until he was 80. I would have asked about that but Bill had kind of a faraway look.

When someone brought me a fruit plate, I noticed there was nothing on the table for Bill, including a name plate like the other 15 AFC coaches arrayed around the room had. I assumed the NFL figured, “It’s not like he’s invisible. Who doesn’t know Bill Belichick?”

Later in the day, the owners were going to vote on a rule change that would prevent what it called “the leaper” block attempt on a field goal or extra point. You remember that became Shea McClellin’s specialty last season. He looked like Edwin Moses hurdling the line and slapping down kicks so New Englanders knew this was now a conspiracy to stop the Patriots. It seemed logical to ask Bill if he believed the Philadelphia Eagles offered that change just to hurt his team.

The competition committee claimed it was an unsafe play. Well, isn’t running through the line more unsafe than jumping over it? I intended to ask about that but Bill’s mind was somewhere else. I understood. He was already hatching a plan to have McClellin roll under the blockers next year.

I didn’t want to ask why he decided to blow the bank on Stephon Gilmore for $14 million a year when he’s paid Malcolm Butler minimum wage his entire career because In Bill I Trust, but I have to admit the last time I saw Gilmore he was about 15 yards behind Chris Hogan. It makes you think, unless you’re a Patriots fan.

What was on my mind was if Bill was considering doing his hair like Gilmore’s in a kind of a bonding thing with the new guy? Sources say, you know. Then I realized with a hoodie that could get kind of bulky in the back. Bill seemed a little detached so why ask?

I did have one other thing on my mind though. Lately it seems there’s been a lot of pictures of Bill joking here and cutting up there, attending sports events and playing golf at Pebble Beach with Ricky Barnes. I was wondering what happened to “No days off!”

Then it hit me. Barnes’ dad once punted for the Patriots. Bill wasn’t taking a day off to play golf. He was working on special teams in disguise. “No days off! Now hand me my 60-degree wedge.”

It was kind of quiet at the table with just me and Bill and one bowl of oatmeal and it was getting late. In Gainesville, Fla., where the University of Florida was holding Pro Day, it was already 10 a.m. I had a few more questions but Bill had drifted away. I thought, poor guy is so tired he came to breakfast disguised as an empty chair, which up to that point I thought was a pretty clever way to keep things intimate.

Soon I learned otherwise. He was again a step ahead of his peers. He wasn’t here disguised as an empty chair. He was in Florida disguised as a scout studying Gators in Gainesville.

Judging by his record for drafting Gators from Gainesville, it seemed his time might have been better spent over a bran muffin. Of the eight Gators he’s drafted in 17 years, only Jeremy Mincey hasn’t been a bust. Only three remain in the NFL and none are in New England, unless you include Aaron Hernandez, whose uniform number is now W106228 not 81. Unlike when he was a tight end, whenever we see Aaron these days he’s covered . . . with prison tats and handcuffs.

Maybe avoiding Gainesville might have been wiser than avoiding breakfast, because there’s only so many mistakes you can make with an omelet, but there was no sense asking. Bill was gone.

PHOENIX — A California documentarian once did a lengthy radio piece on survivors of suicide leaps off the Golden Gate Bridge. He didn’t have to do a lot of interviewing.

The few people he spoke with all expressed one emotion: somewhere between making the jump and hitting the water they had second thoughts.

Not so Kyle Shanahan.

“Nothing in that game I’d do differently,” the former Falcons offensive coordinator and new head coach of the San Francisco 49ers said yesterday when asked about his play calling while Atlanta was blowing a 25-point second-half lead to the Patriots in Super Bowl LI.

“We did what we thought was right at the time,” Shanahan said. “The last time we ran the ball on second-and-long we lost a yard and had a holding call. We ran the ball and got out (had to punt). It was more how they were playing us. They completely changed in the second half. They were 100 percent committed to stopping the run.”

One can draw some conclusions from that. One is, when down 21-3 at halftime Bill Belichick did not conclude “there’s nothing I’d do differently.”

Shanahan’s insistence that refusing to run time off the clock and passing on second-and-11 from the Patriots’ 23 with less than four minutes to play with a potential chip shot field goal and 11-point lead would still be his choice is puzzling at best and troubling at worst. In life and football, one learns from their mistakes or repeats them.

Not long after Shanahan had no second thoughts yesterday, I re-checked Elias Sports Bureau’s startling numbers. In the previous 2,655 NFL games in which a team held a lead of 25 points or more only six teams blew that lead.

According to Elias, teams were 2,545-4-2 in the regular season and 102-2 in the playoffs in such a situation. Today they’re 102-3 in the playoffs because one guy changed at halftime and the other didn’t.

Kyle Shanahan: “There’s nothing in that game I’d do differently.”

Really?

Jeff Ma wrote an interesting dissection of this in Wired magazine. Ma was the leader of the MIT blackjack team that inspired the book “Bringing Down the House,” which they did for a while in Vegas using analytics to beat the dealer. His conclusion was the Falcons decision to time after time snap the ball with more than 10 seconds on the clock in the fourth quarter was “like standing a soft 17 (in blackjack): an ace and six. Normally, a hand that adds up to 17 is a losing hand, but the beauty of the ace is you can play it as an 11 or a one. If you get dealt a 10, you can play the ace as a one and you still have 17. There is no risk to taking one more card. And there is no risk in letting the clock run down under 10 seconds.”

In the situation Atlanta was in what you didn’t want was an incompletion that stops the clock, a sack, a hold or an interception. On the next two plays after getting to the Patriots’ 22, they got two of the four, used up only 12 seconds and were out of field goal range.

Soon after, there was no need to be sized for Super Bowl rings.

While Shanahan remains publicly steadfast, Falcons coach Dan Quinn conceded what happened is something he and his team not only must confront but overcome. He knows it won’t be easy.

“You don’t get over that, you get past it,” Quinn said. “There are 158 plays in a game. There’s ones you look back on and, ah, you’d do it differently. That sequence of events was disappointing.”

Quinn said he heard every call and did not consider overruling them. He said it was that aggressive play calling that helped build their lead but hinted that if he had it to do over again he’d be more prudent.

“A lot of plays we called were aggressive plays,” Quinn said. “The (sack) was a play intended for Julio (Jones). Those are usually good plays. There’s a fine line between a gutsy call and a bad call.”

Kyle Shanahan: “There’s nothing in that game I’d do differently.”

Quinn said he spoke with Seahawks coach Pete Carroll, former Red Sox manager Terry Francona and had several conversations with his friend Steve Kerr, all who suffered a similar fate in a chacmpionship setting. Kerr was coaching Golden State last year when the Warriors blew a 3-1 lead to the Cleveland Cavaliers in the NBA Finals. Kerr’s message was like Hyman Roth’s to Michael Corleone in “Godfather II.” This is the business we’ve chosen.

“He said, ‘Hey, man, I know what those dark nights are like,’ ” Quinn said. “Steve told me it’s tough but it’s what we signed up for. This is where we’re living. I wanted their opinion on how they handled their teams the next year. When the season ends with a loss it’s hard. How do you find a place to put (that) mentally?”

Quinn said there had been no “grieving process” just an effort to figure out why it happened and how to confront the stark reality of losing a Super Bowl. The analytics of the consequences, he admitted, are not encouraging and Atlanta has first-hand knowledge of them. The Falcons’ 1998 team went 14-2 and reached Super Bowl XXXIII, losing 34-19 to the Broncos. The next season it went 5-11.

No team in the past 45 years has won the Super Bowl the season after losing one and no losing team has returned the next year since the 1993 Buffalo Bills. The hangover effect is long lasting, it seems.

Only 35 of the past 44 losers reached the conference championship the next season, 17 were one-and-done in the postseason and 13 missed the playoffs entirely. Since no one ever lost the game that close to victory, how that affects the Falcons is impossible to measure, but Quinn understands his role has changed.

“It was way more counselor than coach,” he said. “It hurts. There were tears but no finger pointing. We have to own the moments that went bad. We have to empathize the moments that went good, too. That’s easy to say.”

Dan Quinn didn’t complete the thought. He didn’t have to. Across the room, his former assistant had no such thoughts at all.

There is no training ground to prepare you to play baseball in Boston, a place where you need both a love of the game and the hide of a rhinoceros to survive. No one ever explained this difficulty better than former Red Sox manager Grady Little.

“In Boston, it’s not just this one decision, or just one game,” he said, not long after being forever held responsible for blowing Game   7 of the 2003 ALCS by leaving a tiring Pedro Martinez in to start the eighth inning against the Yankees with a three-run lead that soon disappeared.

“It’s like this in May. People are talking about devastating losses (at) the end of April or first of May. That’s serious stuff. You don’t play 162 games. You play 162 seasons a year. Every game is a season.”

Every game is a season.

That is what made the transition to playing here impossible for Carl Crawford, Adrian Gonzalez and many others, and difficult for Rick Porcello, David Price and even Pedro. The weight of other people’s expectations is heavy in Boston, where every game is a season in itself.

Earlier this year, Martinez told the Herald that during his first year, though a statistically impressive one at 19-9 with a 2.89 ERA, “I found myself trying to do too much and trying to grind it out too much, and I sometimes got away from the things that made me land in Boston.”

If a spirit as free as Pedro’s had its dark moments in his first exposure to the demands of playing in Boston, what might await this year’s new pitching sensation, Chris Sale?

Not everyone is built for Boston. The jury remains out on Price, who some feel is too sensitive to the cacophony of criticism coming from talk radio and anti-social media to flourish among the sharp elbows of the denizens of Fenway Park, even though he was 17-9 with a 3.99 ERA and some first-half struggles last season that seemed to dissipate the longer he was in town.

Now it is Sale’s turn to face The Boston Baseball Experience (or Nightmare, if you’re overly sensitive), an often topsy-turvy carnival ride that either brings you joy or a need for antacids.

“I think it’s a factor,” club president Dave Dombrowski said of having to consider whether a player he’s pursuing has the right temperament to play here. “There’s a little more scrutiny in Boston, New York and Philadelphia. You want to be as sure as possible a person is up to handling that.”

For his part, Sale is a fiery competitor, known for an intensity he admits has sometimes gotten the better of him. Although his $12  million salary pales in comparison to Price’s $30  million, he will not only be expected to win, he will be expected to win like a No. 1 starter. With such expectations come Hank from Hingham and Mike from Medford ready to undress him on the radio while talk-show hosts feed the flames.

Price seemed at times a bit too fixated on what was said on Twitter, a place where common sense and reason are outlawed. If nothing else, that’s something you won’t have to worry about with Sale.

“I don’t have a Twitter account,” he said, sounding like Bill Belichick talking about “Snapface and InstantChat.” His absence from the vast wasteland of antisocial media will serve him well. So, too, will an apparent lack of interest in the media in general.

“I’m not a big media guy,” he said. “I’m like a race horse. I keep blinders on. I keep focused on baseball-related things.

“I’ve always been very, very competitive. When I was a little kid, they had to hose me down when we lost. Always been that way in everything. My grandfather. My dad. We’re all like that. I’ve been stung by it a couple times, but it’s easier to dial that back than to ramp it up.”

Sale’s competitiveness was well known in Chicago, where for the past five seasons he’s been an American League All-Star with a string of otherwise losing White Sox teams. With the Red Sox, there is little interest in All-Stars if the team doesn’t win. In fact, Boston is legendary for blaming its best players when things get a little squirrelly.

Whether Sale fully understands what Little meant by “162 seasons” remains to be seen, but manager John Farrell seems confident the left-hander has the kind of temperament and work ethic Bostonians embrace.

“There’s a switch that gets flipped when he walks out there to compete,” Farrell said. “(Dustin Pedroia) has that. . . . Chris has the same burning desire to win. That sets the tone for everyone else in the uniform.

“Chris Sale wasn’t brought in here to change a mindset and clubhouse culture. He’s here to add to it. He lives that expectation.”

But what about living with the expectations of others, especially the vocal ones for whom each game is a season?

“We acknowledge there’s a different intensity to it here,” Farrell said. “That can make for challenging moments, so any time you deal with looking at acquiring a player, you do your due diligence. Ultimately we’re betting on people. The character of the individual gives you comfort to invest in him knowing the ability and the ability to deal with adversity.

“His competitive edge is something you welcome. You want a player who is accountable, aware and has a good work ethic. You always concern yourself with the added expectations making someone feel they need to prove their worth, but in our endeavor, more is not necessarily better. One good thing is he doesn’t give a damn about social media. He’s focused on his position.”

If he can do that, even when the wolves are at the door and beginning to howl, and the fans are hanging so close to him at Fenway it makes him feel like he’s pitching in a zoo not on a ballfield, Chris Sale will do all right. Certainly he seems sure of one thing.

“You can feel the fans’ passion for the team,” Sale said. “This is what I’ve always wanted. I want to win. I know I’ll be pitching in front of some of the most passionate fans in the world.

They want to win. I know they’re intense, but so am I. We should get along well.”

AUGUSTA, Ga. — Snoop Dogg and Bow Wow might never play a round of golf among the dogwoods and the pristine greens of Augusta National Golf Club, but this year they have an emissary here. Or at least an acolyte.

Just as there are many ways to strike a golf ball effectively, there are many ways to master the English language. Jon Rahm followed tradition in the former, but not so in the latter.

When the Spanish sensation first arrived at Arizona State as a 17-year-old who knew more about golf than English, he didn’t take an ESL course to perfect his skills. He rapped.

Some might question that method because more than a few words he heard should not be used at a dinner table or at Augusta National if one wants to stay here long, but as with every area of his life, Rahm had a plan.

“It was more not necessarily to learn new words,” said the 22-year-old PGA Tour rookie, much to the relief of the green jacket-clad members at Augusta. “It was to help with pronunciation and enunciation and to be able to talk without pausing. Otherwise, if I hadn’t done that, right now I would probably still be in the first part of this interview.”

Adapting quickly has become the norm for Rahm, who in his first year as a professional has five top-10 finishes and a victory at Torrey Pines. In his past four starts, he’s tied for fifth, tied for third, finished second and tied for 10th. None of that will help him win in his first appearance at the Masters, but it has put him in position to make a mark on a game he’s only just begun to play.

It is not simply unusual for a first-time starter to win at Augusta, it is all but impossible. Because of the oddities on nearly every green and the way the ball rolls toward Rae’s Creek as if drawn by a magnet, experience is a prerequisite for victory.

Only three first-time starters have won the Masters. One, Horton Smith, doesn’t count because everyone was a first-time starter in 1934, when the tournament began. More illustrative of the difficulty of coming here unannounced and winning is the fact the last time it happened was 38 years ago, when Fuzzy Zoeller birdied the second playoff hole (No. 11) in 1979 to beat Tom Watson and Ed Snead.

Zoeller was the first to do it since Gene Sarazen in 1935, so if you’re of a statistical bent, that means it happens about once every 36 years. Bold though Rahm has been since arriving on tour following last year’s U.S. Open (where he finished T-23 in his final amateur appearance and then tied for third at the Quicken Loans National), he accepts that mastering the Masters takes some doing for someone who never has faced the undulating greens and withering pressure.

Still, his rap is: Why else would he be here if not to win?

“I’m going to tee it up believing I can win,” Rahm said. “If I didn’t think I could win, I wouldn’t be here. Truly, Torrey Pines is not one of the places rookies usually win for the first time, and I was able to do it.

“Obviously, this is different. It’s a major and my first time at Augusta. It’s very, very impressive. I might do it, I might not do it, but . . . when I tee it up, it’s just because I want to win and believe that I can win.”

Rahm has become a protege of Phil Mickelson after playing for Lefty’s brother, Tim, at ASU the past four years, and has been buoyed by their unwavering belief in his talent.

“Phil told me even before I turned pro that he thought I was one of the top 10 best players in the world,” Rahm said. “At the time, it gave me a lot of confidence, but I was like, ‘OK, he’s just trying to be nice, right? It’s not possible.’ I mean, I was still in college. You can’t be as good as other players.

“But once I turned pro and started doing what I’m doing, I started believing he was right. I’m pretty close to getting to that point.”

Closer, frankly, than nearly any golfer in history. After finishing in a tie for 10th at the Shell Houston Open last weekend, Rahm moved to 12th in the world rankings in just his 40th week as a pro. That’s the fastest since Tiger Woods and Sergio Garcia, and if he finishes top 10 at the Masters, he’d also become the third-fastest to reach the world top 10 behind Woods (33 weeks) and Garcia (37).

Rapping about such possibilities is far easier than actually doing them, but Rahm is nothing if not confident. That feeling is not without justification, for just two weeks ago, he battled World No. 1 Dustin Johnson down to the final hole at the Match Play.

Rahm won six matches to get to Johnson, then fell 4-down with six holes to play after a rocky start. He birdied three of the remaining holes to cut the deficit to 1, but Johnson held on to win 1-up. Although Rahm failed to win, the lesson he learned might prove more valuable.

“Against Dustin, I really tried to forget the first nine,” Rahm said. “I couldn’t control my body, honestly. . . . I was trying to focus and do my routine, but things just weren’t happening. . . . Once I got back to the groove, I learned that when I’m playing good, I can take on the No. 1 player in the world.”

This week he’ll also be facing the No. 1 golf course in the world in the No. 1 tournament in the world. It will take more than listening to Tupac, Nas or the Notorious B.I.G. to win, but hey, that’s no rap on Jon Rahm, a kid whose first two English words seem to have been: “Why not?”

RORY McILROY

World ranking: 2 | 2016 finish: T-10

Best Masters finish: Fourth (2015)

Reason to watch: This is the only leg of the Grand Slam McIlroy is missing and he knows he should already have it. His 80 on Sunday in 2011 cost him the green jacket and that still grates on him. He could become the seventh golfer in history to complete the Slam with a win here, but to do it he has to avoid repeating his pattern of one atrocious round burying his chances. McIlroy has had a remarkable six rounds of 76 or higher over the past seven years. Take those away and he could open a green jacket store. Maybe this is the year he finally receives his first shipment. He seems recovered from a January rib injury, having finished T4, T7 and T4 in his only three stroke play events this year with a chance to win on Sunday each time out.

JASON DAY

World ranking: 3 | 2016 finish: T-10

Best Masters finish: T-2 (2011)

Reason to watch: There always seems to be some drama swirling around the affable Aussie. He’s had vertigo, injuries, near-misses and finally a tear-stained major’s win at the PGA Championship in 2015. He’s already finished second and third at Augusta so he knows the course is right for him if he’s right. But is he? Day said he feels “under prepared’’ after taking time off to be with his mother, who is battling lung cancer. She just had a successful operation and is doing better. So is Day, who withdrew after six holes at the WGC Match Play event saying he was emotionally unfit to compete. Now he seems fine and his mother may even come to Augusta for her first time if travel arrangements can be okayed by her doctor. That would make for another dramatic win if he can find his game in time.

JORDAN SPIETH

World ranking: 6 | 2016 finish: T-2

Best Masters finish: First (2015)

Reason to watch: Few golfers have assaulted Augusta at first glance like Spieth, who has finished second, first and second in three appearances, and that includes last year’s back nine meltdown around Amen Corner. His 7 at the par-3 12th on Sunday cost him a second straight green jacket but he seemed over it this week when he put his ball within six inches of the pin during a practice round. He turned to the patrons and said, “I could have used that last year.’’ Laughter is the best medicine and Spieth seems well healed from the trauma of blowing a five-shot lead on the back nine of the final round. He is the game’s best clutch putter, has already won once this year at Pebble Beach and has three top 3 finishes in eight starts so he seems primed to perform.

PHIL MICKELSON

World ranking: 18 | 2016 finish: MC

Best Masters finish: First (2004, 2006, 2010)

Reason to watch: Mickelson hasn’t won a tournament in four years when he captured the British Open, but just two years ago he finished T2 here so the drought isn’t quite as severe as it seems. Mickelson loves this course and would love to win a fourth green jacket, tying him with his long-time rival Tiger Woods. He would also become the oldest golfer to win at Augusta, at 47 surpassing Jack Nicklaus. The edge he has here is that most fairways are so wide even his sometime errant driver can’t get him into too much trouble that his crafty wedges can’t get him out of. He’s the sentimental favorite here and his T7, T5 finishes in his last two outings hint he is peaking at the right time.

JON RAHM

World ranking: 12 | 2016 finish: DNP

Best Masters finish: This is his first

Reason to watch: His mentor, Phil Mickelson, told the 6-3 Spaniard he was one of the top 10 players in the world even before he turned pro after last year’s U.S. Open. He seems hell bent on proving him right. Rahm needed only 40 weeks on Tour to be ranked 12th in the world. In his last five events on Tour, Rahm won, finished T16, T5, T3 and 2nd. Two weeks ago he came from 4-down with six to play to nearly catch DJ down the home stretch of the Match Play final. He isn’t quite as hot as Johnson but he is on his game as he makes his first Masters appearance with a chance to make Mickelson look like Notradamus.

KEEP AN EYE ON THESE 3

DUSTIN JOHNSON

World ranking: 1 | 2016 finish: T-4

Best Masters finish: T-4 (2016)

Reason to watch: If not for the back injury he suffered yesterday falling down the stairs at his rented home in Augusta, DJ would be one of the top picks here. No one is hotter than he is after winning six of his last 17 events, including the last three he entered this year. Asked how it felt to be considered the favorite at Augusta this week he said, “I don’t care.” Sounds like a winner’s attitude. His stats are those of a winner, too: first in driving distance and third in proximity to the hole, which makes putting easier in a difficult place like Augusta. DJ’s been in contention here the past two years, and if he’s able to overcome his fall, there’s no reason he can’t win this.

HIDEKI MATSUYAMA

World ranking: 4 | 2016 finish: T-7

Best Masters finish: Fifth (2015)

Reason to watch: He carries all the hopes of the golf-crazed Japanese on his shoulders. That’s considerable pressure but he seems to handle it adroitly. He’s already won twice this season but comes into the Masters off his game. He’s struggled in his last four outings but has fared well at Augusta. He was fifth in 2015 with a closing 66 and T7 last year. He has the game to win here and would become a golfing God in Japan if he does.

RICKIE FOWLER

World ranking: 9 | 2016 finish: MC

Best Masters finish: T-5 (2014)

Reason to watch: Fowler won the Honda earlier this season and was T3 last week at the Houston Shell Open. He’s finished in the top 10 in four of seven events in 2017 and top 5 in three so he is a threat once again. Three years ago he finished top 5 in all four majors, which many saw as a signal he was ready to fulfill all the promise he’d shown but instead he drifted. Although he won the Players and Deutsche Bank in 2015, Fowler needs to start winning major championships if he wants to keep selling those flat-brimmed orange caps in proportions that far exceed their attractiveness.

AND THE WINNER IS: Rory McIlroy

The weather is predicted to be rainy and windy the first two days of the tournament and unseasonably cool on the weekend. Umbrellas were out during yesterday’s final practice rounds and if that persists it means anything could happen. Those kind of blustery conditions seem perfectly suited for McIlroy, who grew up playing links golf in Ireland and England. If he’s going to join one of the most exclusive clubs in golf as a Grand Slam winner, shouldn’t he do it in the rain?

AUGUSTA, Ga. — Rory McIlroy is having second thoughts, but not about winning the Masters.

McIlroy has always said golf’s most iconic tournament is the event he circles on his calendar each year even though when recently asked what playing in the Masters meant to him he replied, “Stress.” He was laughing when he said it. But he wasn’t joking.

That stress has not only been building all week, it has been building ever since he shot 80 on Sunday at Augusta National six years ago to blow what was an Atlanta Falcons-like super lead. He has been chasing a green jacket ever since but hasn’t quite found the right fit, and so his lonely quest continues to join golf’s smallest fraternity —The Fraternal Order of Grand Slammers.

Along the way back and forth to Augusta, McIlroy picked up wins at the U.S. Open, British Open and twice at the PGA Championship, leaving him with four majors but in the even more stressful position of being one green sports coat short of the career Grand Slam. Only six golfers — Bobby Jones, Gene Sarazen, Ben Hogan Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods and Gary Player — have achieved it, so to be the seventh would make McIlroy golfing royalty.

There is a stress that comes with wanting to win but a greater one born of the effort to keep winning, which for McIlroy has been his fate nearly all his career. He has been a prisoner of others’ expectations and his own rare talent since he was a boy and has grown somewhat accustomed to it. What he has not grown comfortable with is teeing it up at the Masters.

“You know, you come up here as much as you want, but once you step on that first tee and it’s the first hole of the Masters, it’s a little different,” McIlroy said. “It seems like those trees on the left come in a little bit more. It seems like the fairway is nonexistent.”

Despite that feeling of a vice closing in on you, McIlroy insisted again this week that “no matter if you win or lose, it’s one of the highlights of the year. I thoroughly enjoy the week.”

Friends and family who have to put up with his admitted Masters week grumpiness may not enjoy the experience, he admits, but he does. What he didn’t enjoy recently was a different round of golfing pressure, when he chose to play not to win a championship but to have a unique experience.

It’s the kind of thing most anyone would have done just to say you had, but when you choose to play golf with Donald Trump these days, there’s a stress that comes with it far different from what you feel on the first tee at Augusta. It is a stress from without, not within.

“I’ve spent time in President Trump’s company before,” McIlroy said. “That does not mean that I agree with everything that he says. Actually, the opposite. But whenever an invitation or a request comes my way, I don’t want to say I jump at the chance, but at the same time, to see the Secret Service, to see the scene, I mean that’s really what I was going for. There was not one bit of politics discussed in that round of golf. He was more interested talking about the grass that he just put on the greens.

“But look, it’s a difficult one. I felt I would have been making more of a statement if I had turned it down. It’s not a tough place to be put in. It was a round of golf and nothing more. Would I do it again? After the sort of backlash I received, I’d think twice about it.”

What he won’t think twice about is that 80 he shot on Sunday in 2011, when he unraveled on the back nine like an old pair of argyle socks. Stitch by stitch he fell apart, defeat wrapping its cold arms around him as his body sagged for the world to see. It was the classic “learning experience,” unwanted but most necessary if one intends to be more than a momentary headline.

“You need to experience that to learn how to handle it and deal with it,” he said. “As a golfer I think there’s a lot of lessons there that have served me well from there to winning four majors and being able to achieve some of the things that I’ve wanted to achieve. Nothing is given to you. You have to go and work for it. It’s never over. The one thing I did learn: If I’m 4 or 5 (shots) behind going into the back nine this week, for example, you know it’s never over. You can never give up because it takes either a lapse of concentration from someone else or a moment of brilliance from yourself to turn things around. I feel like I’ve taken lessons from that day and they have served me well to this point.”

Beginning at 1:41 p.m. today, those lessons will be serving Rory McIlroy once again as he continues pursuing golf’s rarest feat. If he does it, a year from now he’ll feel the same way he does today when he sticks that first tee in the ground at Augusta National at the 81st Masters.

“Stress.”

Joyful stress.

WORCESTER — Saint Cyr Dimanche began his long road to Boston with no luck at all. Then things got worse.

Even for the most elite runners, the Boston Marathon is a challenge. For 23-year-old Saint Cyr, it will be the easiest thing he’s attempted in nearly a decade. At least there won’t be any elephants or lions stalking him.

He’s worried about them enough.

Tomorrow all he has to worry about is 26 miles, 385 yards of pavement and hills leading from Hopkinton to Copley Square. Considering his journey, it’s not much of a trek.

Saint Cyr was born in Central African Republic, a landlocked country that is one of the 10 poorest in the world. In 2015, the Human Development Index declared it the lowest level of human development in the world, 188th of 188 countries.

CAR did not have a civilian leader from 2003, when a military coup deposed the president, until last year. Although Gen. Francois Bozize found ways to retain power for a decade, not even his government army could fully control the countryside; he was finally forced to flee in 2013.

In the midst of this chaos, Dimanche lived in the village of Loura. He went to school 30 miles away in Bocaranga, until his father was killed by rebel soldiers when Saint Cyr was 14. His stepmother, fearing he would follow in the footsteps of many other young boys seeking revenge for that kind of random act, urged him to do, in a sense, what he will do Monday.

Make a run for it.

“My stepmother encouraged me to leave the country,” Dimanche calmly explained while sitting on a small sofa in a tidy home in Worcester. “At that point I am in the tropical forest. It’s not like you say goodbye and get in the car.

“You just say ‘take care of yourself’ and one day you walk away. I had no money. I had no food. I had no directions. I just started walking.”

He was in search of the border with neighboring Cameroon to the west, but could not take the direct route for fear rebel soldiers would find him and either forcibly conscript him or do worse. So he walked through the tropical forest, knowing other problems were lurking.

“I was afraid a lot,” he said. “Afraid of the elephant and the lion. When wild animals move you are afraid for yourself. You don’t want to get trampled by the elephant or eaten by the lion. Nobody can outrun an elephant or a lion.”

In such a circumstance, avoidance is the wise choice, but who can know for sure where such predators are lurking? Or where the rebels are walking? Or even what a stranger may do if you ask for water, something to eat, or simply for directions?

You have in such uncertain circumstance only one choice. You are running your own dark marathon, daily scaling a Heartbreak Hill of life. So you keep moving your feet, for if you stop the race is over.

“I was always thinking somewhere else would be better than where I was,” he said. “To get to the border took three or four weeks. I was alone for 50 kilometers (about 30 miles) until I met four boys. I was the youngest. Mostly we ate wild fruit.

“We would ask people what way to go. We didn’t know anything. We had to be careful because some people might turn you in to the rebels. They may think, ‘Why are you running away?’ ”

It took nearly a month to reach the border and far longer to finally see Yaounde, the capital of Cameroon, from a refugee camp on its outskirts. What he saw, he could not have dreamed.

“When I see this city, my mind is blown out,” he said. “There was lots of traffic. Wow! How can this exist?”

He found a refugee organization and applied for status. There, he met others from CAR in similar circumstances and faced a daunting decision. Live in the refugee camp, or try to make his way in the strange world outside it, with so much noise and so many cars and people?
Like the choice to start walking, it was really no choice at all.

“It was not a good thing for a young man my age to be alone in the camp,” he recalled. “Lots of drugs. Lots of violence there. My way is to keep going.”

For a marathon man or a refugee, it is a wise choice. The choice of his life.

Saint Cyr lived for a time with several refugees who became friends, but needed to make a living. He’d show up at construction sites and ask, “Do you have something for me to do?”

He was hired as a day laborer, carrying cement up as many as 10 flights of stairs. Up and down. Up and down. Up . . . and . . . down . . . until he was ready to drop. A 15-year-old with little to eat, he did this for 12 hours a day. When the day ended, he was handed $1.80.

“To get to the capital and make $1.80 a day was actually an accomplishment,” he said, a smile of pride on his face. “I thought I would live there forever.”

He might have, had his kidneys not become infected from the exhaustive work and poor diet. Eventually he landed in a military hospital. The refugee society paid the cost, but there was no food provided, which makes recovery a bit complicated.

“I had a friend who would visit me every weekend,” Dimanche said. “He’d bring me food and some money to buy things. He was very nice.

“That was the only time I had a question in my mind. Did I make the right decision to leave? But now I think maybe, if I didn’t work this hard, I wouldn’t have gotten sick and wouldn’t get to America. Without refugee status, I don’t know what happens to me.”

He was hospitalized for six months, during which an American couple from Lutheran Social Services visited him. After his release, the refugee office called to say they wanted to send him to a place called Worcester, and a couple named Anne and Bob Bureau that wanted to adopt him.

“I was not telling anybody. The refugee office said some people might get jealous. You may lose your life, Saint Cyr,” Dimanche said. “So I didn’t even tell my friend until I was ready to leave.”

That was in October 2011. He was nearly 18 and had been walking from one place to another for almost four years. Now he was flying to some place called Boston. He didn’t know much else, nor a word of English.

“I didn’t know anything about the United States, but if you come from Africa, the U.S is the final destination for anyone on the planet,” he said. “When I looked out the window of the plane as we were coming down and saw Boston, all I thought was ‘Wow, that’s the America they’re talking about.’ ”
Waiting at Logan were the Bureaus, who spoke English but not a word of Sango, Saint Cyr’s native tongue.

“The social worker with us asked if he spoke English or French,” recalled Bob, the associate director of rehabilitation counseling at Assumption College. “No answer. I knew French was commonly spoken in Africa, so I said, ‘Francais?’ and his face brightened up.”

Not as bright as that of the Bureaus, who had for some time wanted to foster, then adopt a teenager. Although communication was difficult for a time, one thing was clear to them.

“He was our son from the moment we met him,” Bob Bureau said. “He always will be.”

Saint Cyr admits the only time he cried since he left his village was that first day in America, fallout from the language barrier.

Eventually the family met Patrice Dinaye, a medical interpreter who spoke Sango. He helped in person and on the phone, as did a French translation app on Bureau’s smartphone.

Before he turned 18, Saint Cyr had to be enrolled in public school because if he was not, he would be declared an adult and have to seek his education through GED programs. After not having been in school for eight years and speaking no English, he suddenly found himself in an American classroom.

Initially it was at a new citizen’s school with a number of kids in similar circumstances, but soon he transferred to Claremont Academy and immersed himself in English.

“We didn’t focus on challenges,” Bob Bureau said. “We focused on opportunity. He loved to play soccer, but instead of after-school sports, he went to after-school programs and tutoring without complaining.

“We were focused on getting him the best education we could. At 17, he had a huge gap with no English skills and only 31⁄2 years to pass the MCAS.”

“I would have liked to play soccer and show my talent but I understood my goal was to study very hard to get it done. And I did,” Saint Cyr added. “It was kind of embarrassing at first, but I felt that should not stop me. I don’t want to let excuses define me. I don’t want to say I can’t do things because something happened to me in the past.

“Sometimes I think about my sister (He has not communicated with her since he walked into the forest), but there is nothing I can do but pray for her. If I focus on that a lot, I’d be losing two things instead of one. Overall, I just keep going.”

After those 31⁄2 years, Saint Cyr Dimanche graduated from Claremont as a member of the National Honor Society, vice president of his class and, most important, an entrant into Brandeis University’s Myra Kraft Transitional Year Program, which provides small classes and a strong support system for students with limited educational opportunities before college.

It is a five-year program and Dimanche is finishing his second year with a major in international and global studies and the intention of helping people in the same circumstances he found himself the day he began the long road to Boston.

How that road led to the city’s famed marathon is nearly as unlikely as him getting to Brandeis.

“I woke up one morning in the summer of 2014 and thought maybe I should do something,” Saint Cyr explained. “I didn’t even have running shoes, but I learned I could possibly raise money for charity from running.”

His father got him a pair of shoes and soon, Saint Cyr ran the seven-mile Falmouth Road Race, raising $1,000 for the Genesis Club of Worcester. He raised $2,000 the next year, then $3,000, and last year finished 149th out of 4,718 male runners with a 6:29 per-mile pace.

He began running with the Central Mass Striders, but trained primarily on his own for his next goal: Qualifying for the 2017 Boston Marathon. Last July, he ran Vermont’s Mad Marathon in 3:29, 24 minutes short of the qualifying time for his age group, so he entered the Lehigh Valley Marathon in September believing he could still make it.

“Saint Cyr is not a distracted individual,” Bob Bureau said. “When he says he’s going to run the Falmouth Road Race, he does it. When he says he’s going to run a marathon, he does it.”

He was on pace to hit his qualifying time when, inexplicably, a train cut through the course, stopping the runners for more than nine minutes. Unfamiliar with the consequences of such a mid-race cool down, Saint Cyr ran himself into trouble when he restarted, injured his leg and struggled to finish. He failed to qualify in the final Boston qualifier.

Or had he?

The story of the bizarre circumstances in Pennsylvania circulated around Brandeis’ campus and an anonymous donor bought Saint Cyr a spot on the American Red Cross charitable team by donating $5,000. Such teams are allowed spots at Boston even if their runners don’t have qualifying times because they are racing for charity.

Which means Saint Cyr is running for an organization quite familiar with war-torn and disaster-ridden countries. Countries including Central African Republic, meaning he will be running for boys like the one he’d once been.

Full circle, halfway around the world.

“If I don’t get sick in Cameroon, I wouldn’t have this opportunity to come to the United States,” Saint Cyr says. “That was not my plan. That was God’s plan for me.

“After the race in Pennsylvania, I asked, ‘Why God doesn’t want me to qualify?’ Now I’m running to raise money for the Red Cross. His plan was for me to run to help someone like me.

“That’s why I never worry. I just keep going forward.”

Riley Nash could have said a lot of things last night. In the end, he said the right thing, even though the referee who banished him to the penalty box in overtime and ultimately sentenced the Bruins to a crushing 4-3 overtime loss to the Ottawa Senators at the Garden did not.

On a night when roughing was the whole way this playoff game was played, Nash was sent off for two minutes when he reacted to being nailed from one direction and then the other, putting glove to face in response to having taken elbow to nose. It seemed a reasonable and measured response, frankly.

Yet one is taught early in sports that it is most often only the reaction that officials see, not the provocation. Certainly that was the case last night, but NHL playoff hockey is famous for the, shall we say, lax manner in which the constabulary generally enforces the laws of the ice.

That is how it was all night. That is almost always how it is in overtime this time of year. That’s not how it went when it counted most.

“It certainly wasn’t gentle out there,” said Bruins forward David Backes. “It was a man’s game. Nash got crushed from one side and crumpled from the other.”

The implication was clear. Politely put, it was this: “Are you kidding me? You’re gonna call . . . that?!”

Indeed so, and 65 seconds after Nash was put in lockup, Kyle Turris made a perfect pass to Bobby Ryan, who knocked the puck by Tuukka Rask for a game-winner that Bruins coach Bruce Cassidy described as “demoralizing. Very demoralizing.”

No one felt that weight more than Nash, even though he seemed to have at best committed a misdemeanor that should have led to no more than someone whispering, “Don’t do that again” as they all skated away. But that’s not what happened because justice is not evenly distributed in life or in the NHL.

In fact, sometimes it’s not distributed at all, because if there was any justice the Bruins would have pulled out last night’s game. After falling behind 3-0 because of their own somnambulant play, they scored twice within 42 seconds in the second period to close the gap, and then David Pastrnak tied it up at 13:51 of that period to leave things dead even until the law stepped in and gave the Senators not only a break but, for all intents and purposes, a 2-1 lead in this best-of-seven series.

Nash could have said any form of that after it was over and been fully justified. Certainly his coach’s head seemed ready to explode any time the call was mentioned, finally spitting out after “demoralizing,” “very demoralizing” and “disappointing” didn’t quite seem enough that, “There are probably a lot more words, but they called it. They called it. We have to kill it.”

The way he said it, the homicide he was seeking seemed more likely directed at the officials than the Senators. Yet Nash understood there was another dynamic here. There was another fact of life when a call like that is made because frankly, it’s not like he was innocent.

Certainly he did the deed. But doesn’t self-defense come in there somewhere?

Not last night, apparently.

“I think it was pretty selfish,” Nash said, softly taking himself to task. “You can’t make that play. You can’t put the referees in that position.”

The “position” of which he spoke was that they had to make a choice. Did they ignore the obvious and assume it was only a reaction to some unseen provocation on a night filled with them? Or did they simply apply the law as written?

They chose the latter, and then Riley Nash chose to show the world another form of playing a man’s game.

He didn’t complain. He didn’t point out the obvious — which would be back to some form of “Are you kidding me? You’re gonna call . . . that?!” He simply stood tall and took the heat, explaining that while he may have gotten an elbow in the face, “Whatever it was, still it’s the playoffs. You’ve got to take that.”

You do?

Apparently you did last night but only when the referees suddenly felt you had to because they let a lot of similar actions and reactions go. They let, for example, pesky Brad Marchand get popped in the face in a clear, post-whistle retaliation, and there were a half-dozen similar incidents. None were called.

Then, with the game on the line in overtime, the constabulary decided to suddenly become law-and-order fanatics. Barely a minute later the game had been decided.

Nash could have hidden behind that or he could have just hidden in the bowels of TD Garden. He did neither. Instead, he stood in front of a locker and bailed out the referees.

“I think he got over late and (only) saw my reaction,” Nash said. “There’s only two of them (officials) and 10 of us. I can’t put them in that position. I’ve got to take it.

“It was a physical game. Everyone was hitting good. But it doesn’t matter if it’s a man’s game or not. I can’t do that.”

As Riley Nash stood there taking the heat when it would have been easy and understandable to argue another case, he made one thing clear: The man’s game didn’t stop when the puck went by Tuukka Rask for the last time last night.

It didn’t stop until Riley Nash stopped talking.