Yesterday’s final round of the WGC NEC Invitational threw out more questions than Larry King: How long until the magnificent Firestone Country Club hosts a major championship again? Considering how entertaining and competitive the past two weeks’ tournaments have been, should all PGA Tour venues be set up in a similar fashion – long with plenty of thick rough but greens that are able to hold a decently struck approach shot? How on Earth is Sergio Garcia ranked sixth in the world and eighth on the money list when he putts like that? Whatever happened to Kenny Perry, one of the few guys you’d expect to stand up to Woods? And, apart from Chris DiMarco, who always seems to put up some sort of fight, are Perry and the rest of the world’s best players simply scared of beating Woods?

Here are the answers. Well, it won’t be until 2016, or thereabouts, as the USGA and PGA are already committed to other venues until 2012 and Firestone doesn’t figure in any of the speculation as to where they will go immediately thereafter. This is a shame, because Firestone’s South Course has never been the site of a U.S. Open and hasn’t hosted a PGA Championship since 1975.

It proved itself a truly great test this weekend, adhering to the formula that makes genuine championship courses what they are – it giveth much, but can definitely taketh away if you’re not careful. Birdies were on offer as Saturday’s low scoring proved, but bad drives were penalized, with the level of punishment appropriate for the gravity of the crime.

Which brings us onto the next question. No doubt about it, Baltusrol and Firestone were set up as golf courses should be for serious golf tournaments. The PGA Tour and USGA should take note, as they are currently a little wide of the standard which the PGA of America set at Baltusrol and which the WGC NEC attained this weekend.

Too often, it seems, U.S. Open courses are simply too penal for their own good. Any drive missing the fairway by a yard can take 10 minutes to find. And iron shots that appear perfectly struck bounce hard, fail to check up, and invariably finish over the back of the green. The well-struck, lofted approach therefore often ends up in exactly the same position: in heavy rough beyond the pin or off to the side of the green.

Tour courses are perhaps a little too easy. Too many venues are being described as bomber’s paradises, where players can simply stand up on the tee and smack the dimples off the ball with no thought as to what might be the best line. Doral was one, Warwick Hills another.

That sort of golf appeals to many. Birdies are what a lot of viewers want to see. But a 350-yard slash followed by a wedge from the rough is becoming the standard route to birdie these days, and there’s something not quite right about that.

One of the main protagonists is Sergio Garcia, who has won well over $2.5 million this season despite holding a putter the way John Nash held a pencil.

The Spaniard currently ranks 203rd on Tour for putting average at 1.84 putts per green. For whatever reason, he shows none of the confidence and exuberance on the greens that he does in the fairway/rough, which is slightly surprising given the two players he looked up to most as a kid – Seve Ballesteros and Jose Maria Olazabal, two of the finest putters ever.

Garcia is as high up the money list as he is because he averages 300.4 yards off the tee, finds 71.3% of greens in regulation (good for third place), and is perfectly capable of putting well on his day, as he demonstrated in June when he won the Booz Allen Classic behind 1.647 putts per green.

One wonders how much longer he can maintain his lofty position, however, if there are many more performances like yesterday’s, when he struck 31 putts and averaged two puts per green in regulation to stumble home in a tie for 13th.

As for Perry, shooting a final-round 74 after a third-round 64 was one of the more surprising meltdowns in recent memory. Not nearly as improbable as Retief Goosen’s collapse at the U.S. Open this year, it was nonetheless shocking to see someone of Perry’s class miss so many fairways (50%) and hit so few greens (10 out of 18).

Perry is something of an enigma. A considerably better player in his 40s than he ever was in his 20s or 30s, Perry has won six of his nine titles in the last four years and climbed as high as eighth in the world in the summer of 2003 (he is now 11th). He is one of the longest straight drivers in the world (or one of the straightest long drivers) and as composed a front runner as most.

One can only assume that the sight of Tiger Woods in red on a Sunday afternoon did for Perry what it has done for so many others.