Kournikova of golf? Not if he can help it

MIAMI -- The questions came kindly in English, lots of press-conference puff 'n' stuff about playing great at Doral in 2006 as a PGA Tour rookie.

Then the media from Camilo Villegas' home country Colombia dove Tuesday into deeper, hotter water. Are you haunted by losing to Tiger Woods here two years ago? Can you win this event, the elite-field CA Championship? Is Tiger beatable?

That's driving hard and straight, past all the endorsements and magazine spreads and right to the heart of the matter. That's pushing one of golf's most watchable young stars the way he needs to be pushed, for Villegas is too talented and too passionate to wind up one day as golf's version of Anna Kournikova.

In Colombia, people want Villegas to be Carlos Valderrama, the retired soccer king known for a great mop of hair dyed blond or orange or both.

They want Villegas to be Juan Pablo Montoya, a truly big wheel who has won on the Formula One circuit and at the Indianapolis 500 and doesn't mind trading paint these days with the good old boys of NASCAR.

They want Villegas, a new resident of Jupiter, to do more than turn heads in the manner of Shakira, another Colombian sensation. They want him to win tournaments the way Shakira wins Grammy Awards.

Villegas gets all that, but he also understands what it takes on the PGA Tour. He understands because, at 26, he has never done it, and he never did on the Nationwide Tour, either.

"I am tough on myself," he said, "but I can tell you there's no internal pressure or anything. The outcome, I can't control it. I can only control the process."

The topic is touchy with Villegas, but not yet toxic. He won a professional event on the Japan Tour in September, a legitimate event won in years past by notables such as Larry Nelson, Mark O'Meara and Corey Pavin.

There is plenty of time for the former University of Florida All-American to hit his stride in the United States. But the spotlight only grows stronger, whether or not the results warrant it. Tournament organizers for this World Golf Championships event at Doral certainly aren't shy about matching Villegas with Phil Mickelson in one of Thursday's featured first-round groupings.

Mickelson is No. 2 in the World Golf Rankings. Australian Craig Parry, the other member of the threesome, is a former Doral champion. Villegas (pronounced bee-JAY-gus) has done very little in comparison, but his name will be one of the brightest on the Blue Monster all the same.

It's not a curse, just a challenge to master the little parts of this game as he mastered the Doral galleries two years ago with rounds of 65, 66, 71 and 67. Everywhere else in 2008 he's been stuck in neutral, scoring 70 on average and finishing no better than a tie for 13th.

"This year I've just had some tweaky tee shots, and then last week (a tie for 44th at Bay Hill that included just one round under par) I just wasn't very sharp with my chipping out of the rough.

"So it's just little things here and there. But again, they're little, but they cost."

Clearly, importantly, he's narrowed this job down from the wide-screen, technicolor presentation that marked his rookie season.

"Bottom line," said Villegas, a playoff loser to Mark Wilson at the 2007 Honda Classic, "I've just got to play good golf."

Greatness, that's a question for Tiger alone, but reporters from Colombia will continue to ask Villegas about it. They're holding him accountable, the way family members do with family members. They're showing him how much more there is beyond the photo shoots.