When golfing great - and dedicated family man -Phil Mickelson won the legendary Masters golf tournament Sunday afternoon, his cancer-stricken wife Amy had managed to get out of her sick bed at the home they rented in Augusta and be on hand, along with their three children, to celebrate her man’s victory.

Mickelson’s mother Mary, also suffering from breast cancer, was also there. On his way to the scorer’s tent, a deeply emotional Mickelson, who didn’t know whether Amy would be able to make it there or not, stopped for what seemed an eternity for a tear-filled hug with the woman he clearly loves and is faithful to. He also hugged the children and his parents.

In the meantime, Elin Nordegren, wife of serial adulterer Tiger Woods, was nowhere to be seen. She had been spotted getting onto a private jet in Florida days earlier and heading off to points unknown. Hubby Tiger had rented a house for her and their two children in Augusta, Georgia, but she - much to her credit - was a no-show.

And when Mickelson finally sunk a birdie putt on the last hole and raised his arms in victory, CBS announcer proclaimed “That’s a win for the family.”

And so it was. Mickelson, who has never been afraid to display his feelings for his family - and who actually missed last year’s British Open to stay with his wife during her first round of breast cancer treatments (and has taken criticism from both the media and his fellow golfers for his pro-family displays) - said later that, “ I don’t normally shed tears over wins, and when Amy and I hugged off 18, that was a very emotional moment for us and something that I’ll look back on and just cherish. I mean, I’ll cherish every moment of this week.”

As for Tiger, golf’s great superstar, he too may look at that and understand just what it is he has sacrificed during his years of betrayal.

A reasonable reader may well ask what any of this has to do with a golf tournament? After all, professional athletes rise or fall mainly on the strength or weakness of their particular athletic skills, not on their view of family values.

A golf course, even one as revered as the Augusta National, isn’t a Church.

Yet, given everything that has transpired since Woods crashed his SUV into a tree outside his Florida mansion late last year, has put a spotlight on the whole issue of marital fidelity.

And given the importance of Tiger to the business of golf, most of the mainstream media - and especially the golf media - has tended to treat Tiger as if he was the victim.

How many references have we seen, for example, to the skanky women who bared their all for Tiger? And perhaps they are skanky. But what does that make him?

It raises the old feminist complaint - a legitimate complaint at that - that our language has descriptive words for women who are promiscuous but not for men.

Even during the golf broadcast itself, CBS reporter Peter Kostis actually thanked Woods “for being here.” Imagine. He was there

win a golf tournament. That’s what he does. It wasn’t a favor for CBS. And almost all the announcers made references to “all that Tiger has been through,” as if he had suffered from some horrible set of circumstances not of his own making. Unlike Amy Mickelson - and Tiger’s wife Elin - Tiger is no victim. He’s the villain, pure and simple. Yet the entire back page of the National Post sports section on Saturday was devoted to a mammoth picture of Tiger astride an Augusta fairway with the headline underneath in quotes, “Make us proud.”

Proud? Who could possibly be proud of this man, this money-making machine who abused is wife and used his fame and fortune to bed countless women, including the young daughter of his neighbor in Florida. Proud indeed.

Are we to be proud of a man who presented himself to the world as the ideal family man - who used that image to sell cars and golf equipment and numerous other things - and who, once revealed, hid behind the phony notion that he had a “sex addiction?” It wasn’t his fault, don’t you know. The devil made him do it.

Then there’s that extraordinarily dreadful advertisement broadcast by NIKE last week using the voice of Tiger’s dead father to sell shoes. How low can he and NIKE sink? Apparently there are not limits.

All of which tells you why the comparison between Mickelson the dedicated family man and Woods the fallen fornicator really does matter this time.

It may even be enough for the media to give Woods the treatment he deserves.

He’s a great golfer, to be sure, but he’s hardly the type of person you’d want your children to be.