Who really knows when someone -- or some team -- overachieves or underachieves? And is there really such a thing? Our Grant Boone tries to make sense of it all, but he's not sure if he reached his potential.

By Grant Boone, Special to PGA.com

First off, I have good news for fans of the Seahawks, Jags, Colts, and Cowboys: despite last weekend's playoff losses, your teams are still eligible for the Tour Championship.

Actually, I wish the NFL postseason operated like the PGA Tour's. I certainly wouldn't have been as splotchy as I was Sunday. "Splotchy" is what my wife calls it when patches of crimson appear on my face and neck as I watch my favorite teams play, especially during the tense moments, such as the pre-game show and coin toss.

Those favorite teams have changed, in some cases, as the years have passed. My college football blood has run bright orange since going to my first Tennessee game on Thanksgiving weekend 1980 and watching one of the Vols' annual disembowelings of Vanderbilt. (Commodore fans, knowing UT faithful would eventually work for them, used to always fire back, "How many Tennessee football players does it take to change a tire? One, and he gets three hours credit for it.") Growing up in 1970s, pre-pro Memphis and Nashville, I latched onto the Oakland Raiders for no particular reason other than they were good at the time.

For family harmony -- coming from Kansas City, my wife learned well to loathe the Silver and Black -- I seceded from Raider Nation a few years ago and spread my NFL-allegiance to three teams: the Tennessee Titans, because I'm from Nashville; Indianapolis, because of former Vol Peyton Manning; and Dallas, because it's the only team within a tank of gas.

All three made the playoffs this year. All three are now out after Splotchy Sunday. (The Titans actually beat the rush and bowed out the week before in San Diego.) Sunday, the Colts and Cowboys -- both favored at home to win by at least a touchdown -- were embarrassed by injury-depleted teams and lost ignominiously as various parts of my body from the shoulders up periodically reddened, beginning with Marvin Harrison's momentum-muting fumble around during lunch and ending right before dinner six hours later when Tony Romo's desperation heave was picked off by R.W. McQuarters, a defensive back in the Giants' dime package who sounds like something off the Mickey D's Dollar Menu.

I root hard for my teams, but I'm more of a buzzard than an ostrich: I tend to pick apart their deficiencies rather than expecting invincibility. So with the Colts' carcass still fresh on the RCA Dome curb and fans like me trying to find a way to carrion, I'm pondering the concept of underachieving.

Last year, I used Peyton Manning's Super Bowl victory in a column about choking (read here). I'll use Manning as a test case again on this subject. Since arriving in Indianapolis in 1998, the former No. 1 pick in the draft has helped the Colts become one of the NFL's elite teams. They've missed the playoffs just twice in his 10 seasons and this year became the first team in NFL history to win at least 12 games in five straight years. But in two of the last three years, they've lost the divisional playoff game despite having earned either a one or two seed and, thus, playing at home after a bye week. (It should be mentioned that the other of those three years was the one in which they rallied from 21-3 down to beat New England and eventually win the Super Bowl.) Still, it's a fair question: in that 12-win stretch from 2003-2007, did the Colts underachieve?

First, you have to settle on the meaning of the term, which I think is a little tougher than defining "choke." Though still somewhat subjective, I think you can fairly say choking is when a player or team does something unusually poorly in an especially pressurized situation. (That last sentence -- in which I managed to shoehorn three adverbs into a five-word cluster as I try to beat my deadline -- is a good example.)

Underachieving means you've achieved less than something, but what? Your own expectations? The fans'? The media's? I think it has to include at least a little bit of the choking definition, the part about not performing when it counts at the most important times. In the three years prior to last season's Super Bowl title, they lost to the eventual champion -- the Patriots in 2003 and 2004 and the Steelers in 2005. But you could argue the Colts had at least equal, if not superior, talent to those teams that beat them.

The buzzard says the Colts underachieved, if only slightly.

What does any of this have to do with golf? (I hate it when you ask me that.) Actually, fans and scribes of the sport have applied the underachiever label liberally through the years to sundry golfers, often because they're not the best Sunday golfers. Certain players are rendered overachievers, as well. Is there really such a thing as either achiever, Under or Over?

Tom Weiskopf won 16 PGA Tour events, including the 1973 British Open. But because he's regarded as having one of the finest swings the game has ever seen, some call him a U.

Meanwhile, another major Tom is usually lumped in with the Os. Tom Lehman has five career wins and -- like John Candy's Del Griffith in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles -- a Casio! (Specifically, the 1993 Casio World Open in Japan.) Besides his Open Championship in '96, Lehman's won at Colonial, Southern Hills, and the Memorial. But because his isn't a classic swing or career path -- he lost his card after a couple of years in the mid-'80s and wound up playing anywhere in the world where he could find a game -- Lehman's thought of by many as an O.

Davis Love III and Fred Couples are on everyone's short list of most likable players, yet they've lived under the Under category for the last decade. Fighting through chronic back problems, Love has amassed 19 wins and Couples 15, but each has just the one biggie (Love, the '96 PGA; Couples the '92 Masters). Plus both guys were studs in college, hit it a mile, and won early in their careers (each when he was 23). Perception has a huge impact on whether or not someone is considered O or U.

Which leads us to Tom Kite, who -- as an alumnus of the University of Texas -- no doubt wishes to be left out of any conversation involving the letters O and U. As a co-NCAA champion with fellow Longhorn Ben Crenshaw, Kite certainly came to the Tour with solid amateur credentials. And like Love, only one of Kite's 19 wins was a major. But it's sometimes said of him that he "got the most out of his game," which is a euphemism for O.

Sometimes, a player can move in or out of the Over/Under categories. For more than a decade, Phil Mickelson was considered U's poster boy. Through March of 2004, he'd won 22 times, the first of those while still on the Arizona State golf team, but none of the Big Four. Winning the 2004 Masters removed the major monkey from his back; taking two of the next eight Grand Slam events moved him off the U list once and for all. As of now, Mickelson has 32 wins/three majors. That puts him in Johnny Miller territory (25/2): frequently dazzling with enough skins to keep him off the U ledger permanently. But Mickelson's only 37, meaning he should have at least five more seasons at full strength. If he gets to, say, 45/5 or 40/6 -- which you'd have to say is more likely than not -- he'd move up alongside Tom Watson (39/8) among the all-time greats.

Sunday's winner at the Sony Open in Hawaii may have gone the other way. K.J. Choi was dubbed by many as an O after giving up powerlifting to take up golf at 16. He was something of a novelty as the first Korean to make it qualify for the PGA Tour, then became a fixture by winning a few tournaments. A New Orleans here, a Greensboro there, a Tampa Bay every now and again. But winning both Jack's and Tiger's tournaments last year (and the Sony on Sunday) has taken Choi to seven in the world rankings and might've removed him from the O list for good.

The question now is whether or not he should've ever been there in the first place. By my count, there are only six players younger than Choi (37) who've won more than he has (7): Woods (61), Mickelson (32), Jim Furyk (13), Justin Leonard (11), Stuart Appleby (8), and Mike Weir (8). And two of those, Furyk and Weir, are only younger by a week. There's less a sense that he's continuing to overachieve than that he's simply settling in to his prime as a top-tier performer.

Ultimately, only the individuals involved really know whether or not they got the most out of themselves. You might think Fred Couples could've won the Grand Slam had he practiced as hard as Vijay Singh or at least hit a bag of balls every couple of Presidential administrations. But no one knows a performer better than him or herself. And after all, different ones of us set out to achieve different things. Take this column, for example. Do I think I underachieved? I'm not sure, but I am starting to feel splotchy.

Grant Boone is a husband, father, golf broadcaster, and sports journalist based in Abilene, Texas. His column appears on PGA.com each Wednesday and every day during major championships and other big events. He can be contacted at pgagrant@hotmail.com.

The views and opinions expressed here do not reflect those of PGA.com or The PGA of America.