ORLANDO -- When your career body of work consists of winning two professional golf tournaments, the idea that you will capture one of the next two does not seem very likely.
But that is what Charles Howell III faces if he wants to return to his hometown major championship in two weeks.
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Charles Howell III will be spending Masters week watching the year's first major outside the ropes unless he can pull off some impressive golf over the next two weeks.
The Augusta, Ga., native who now lives in Orlando has not secured an invitation for his favorite tournament, the Masters, after seven straight appearances.
A great opportunity was missed Sunday at the Transitions Championship, where Howell bogeyed two of the last four holes to finish second by one stroke to winner Retief Goosen.
It was Howell's 11th career runner-up finish, to go with his two PGA Tour victories, but nonetheless boosted him back into the top 100 in the Official World Golf Rankings at 97th after he had fallen to a career-worst 145th earlier this month.
This is the same guy who came to the PGA Tour with so much fanfare out of Oklahoma State and was named the top player in the world age 25 and younger in a 2005 Sports Illustrated poll, beating out such golfers as Adam Scott and Sergio Garcia.
Howell, 29, is not held in such high esteem today, and Sunday's near-miss only heightened the anxiety as a victory would have meant an automatic invitation to the Masters.
"The golf tournament means more to me than anything," said Howell, whose best finish at Augusta is a tie for 13th in 2004. "That's maybe why I haven't played as well as I would have liked to. But frankly, it's just hard to get that out of your head; that it is Augusta. So everybody's nervous there. Everybody's on edge. The golf course can make you look great or look like an absolute idiot, but I love it. And I think everybody in golf loves it.
"I don't think there's a professional golfer in the world that wouldn't like to play that golf tournament."
Howell finds himself in this predicament because he had a so-so year in 2008; he missed the cut in three of the four major championships, failed to qualify for the Tour Championship and was not among the top 50 in the world at the end of the year. The latter two would have punched a ticket to the Masters.
Short of being among the top 50 by Monday -- the cutoff for the world ranking -- the only thing left for Howell to do is win this week at the Arnold Palmer Invitational or at next week's Shell Houston Open.
And that's what makes Sunday's finish so tough. Howell had fought his way into contention on the back nine at Innisbrook with birdies on the 11th, 12th and 14th holes to tie Goosen. The four finishing holes are among the toughest on tour, and there is no shame in bogeying any of them. But Howell laments the par-3 15th, where he missed the green with a 7-iron and made a bogey. He bogeyed the next hole, too, but so did Goosen.
The week prior in Puerto Rico -- Howell was not eligible for the World Golf Championship event at Doral -- he was in contention heading into the third round but shot 78. "That was a quiet night in the hotel room there," said Howell, who rebounded with a 66 the next day, then played the Tavistock Cup exhibition, where the second day he was Tiger Woods' partner.
"It was just kind of nice to pick myself back up from that day in Puerto Rico where I did not play well at all," he said.
Now he's got two chances left to get to Augusta and nothing short of a victory will get it done.
"That's probably my biggest disappointment is not being in that tournament," Howell said. "I've given it a run. I've played a lot of tournaments. I've played a lot of golf this year. I'm going to play the next two and work my tail off to try to do it."
And if he doesn't make it?
"I'll watch every second of it, because I think it's great," he said. "I wouldn't miss it."
Getting to a higher level
It is somewhat taken for granted around these parts, especially at the Bay Hill Club & Lodge, where on the restaurant menu can be found a beverage simply called the "Arnold Palmer." Since the golf icon owns the place, it seems to make sense.
But the concoction of lemonade and iced tea goes beyond Bay Hill bounds. A company that markets Arizona Tea, the AriZona Beverage Company, sells the Arnold Palmer drink in single serving containers. And it is something that impressed Padraig Harrington when he discovered it two weeks ago while in Miami.
Harrington had been asked a question on Tuesday at Bay Hill about getting to another level in the game. And that triggered his memory.
"You're thinking about the next level?" said Harrington, who was eating dinner at the bar of an Italian restaurant in Miami.
"A guy came up to the bar and he ordered an Arnold Palmer and the barman knew what that drink was," said the Irishman, who has won the past two major championships and three overall. "Now that's getting to another level.
"Think about it. You don't go up there and order a Tiger Woods at the bar. You can go up there and order an Arnold Palmer at a bar in this country and the barman -- he was a young man, 25 years of age, he knew what the drink was. That's getting to another level totally. That's in a league of your own.
"I thought you could [order] it in a golf club, but he ordered it in a random bar, and the guy who probably wouldn't know one end of a club from the other knew what it was."
A look at this week's venue
The Bay Hill Club has been home to what is now known as the Arnold Palmer Invitational since 1979, when the Orlando-based PGA Tour event moved across town from Rio Pinar Country Club.
Palmer had won the Florida Citrus Open at Rio Pinar in 1971 and in the late 1960s bought the Bay Hill Club, where he had winter residence. The course was originally designed by Dick Wilson and Joe Lee in 1961, with Palmer himself doing an overhaul in 1989. Over the years, Arnie has tweaked the layout, and in 2007 the 7,137-yard course was converted from a par-72 to a par-70. This year it will play to 7,239 yards.
Last year, Bay Hill ranked as the 18th-most difficult on the PGA Tour, with the par-4 fourth ranking as the toughest on the course. The 460-yard hole, which in 2007 was converted from a par-5 to a par-4, yielded just 19 birdies for the week.
Bob Harig covers golf for ESPN.com. He can be reached at BobHarig@gmail.com.
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