It's easy, really. No big deal. You don't have to be drafted. You don't have to sign a contract. To turn pro in golf, you just check a box. And so last summer, two weeks after his greatest individual triumph in golf as an amateur, Charles Howell III did exactly that. When he came to the status options on the Canon Greater Hartford Open entry form, he passed over the box marked "Amateur" and checked the one labeled "Professional."

Easy as pie. Oh, and one other thing -- in making that check mark, Howell also declared his candidacy to become the Next Tiger.

Why not? Tiger Woods has dominated golf so completely for so long -- it sure seems like that, doesn't it? -- that it makes perfect sense to have an entry form for golfers applying to be the Next Tiger.

The nominees currently include two Australians, Aaron Baddeley and Adam Scott; two Englishmen, Luke Donald and Nick Dougherty; and two Americans, David Gossett and Howell -- none of whom were shaving regularly when Tiger won his first Masters and the Next Tiger talk began.

The Aussies haven't cracked an egg in the States. The Brits haven't turned pro. And Gossett is on the Buy.com Tour, where he ranks 25th on the money list. So the leader in the clubhouse, by a hefty margin, is Howell, who's earned more than $665,000 in 23 tour events last year and this, has three top-10 finishes -- but isn't a member of the PGA Tour. Yet.

Howell says he made up his mind to turn pro -- and he says it so earnestly you don't dare raise an eyebrow -- when he hit his first Wiffle golf ball at age 7. After that, he flash-forwarded through a middle-class childhood and adolescence atypical only for the trophies (local, regional, national) that piled up in his parents' home in Augusta, Ga., a couple of miles from you know where.

The idea began to crystallize in January 2000, when his swing instructor, David Ledbetter, told Howell he was very nearly ready. His Oklahoma State coach, Mike Holder, wasn't exactly overjoyed when he heard what his star junior was contemplating. (Asked how his coach took it when he became the first Cowboy golfer to turn pro before his eligibility was up, Howell pauses, then says, "Our relationship is getting better.")

Last spring, still unsure about making the jump, Howell won the Big 12 championship by 10 shots. Then he led OSU to the NCAA team title and won the individual championship by eight shots at a record 23 under par. The next week he placed second in a Buy.com Tour event, the best finish ever by an amateur. And the following week he checked a box in Hartford.

"After I signed in," says Howell, "I walked out of the office and said, 'Well, you've done it now, stuck your neck right out there.' "

By the time Howell could call to tell his mother he'd turned pro, she'd already heard the news from radio and newspaper guys calling for the family's reaction. That day and the next, the GHO looked less like a golf tournament and more like feeding time at the zoo, with all the agents swarming the place, looking for the freshest meat in golf. "A year ago, I was 21 going on 22," says Howell today. "Now I'm 22 going on 30. I've been beaten up pretty good in the last year."

Turning pro was easy. Becoming a member of the PGA Tour -- that's hard. You can finish in the top 35 of the Tour Qualifying School, a grueling six-round tournament that comes after passing through one or two preliminary qualifying stages. (Last year 1,100 applicants were accepted.) You can win a Tour event as an amateur, as Phil Mickelson and Scott Verplank did. Or, using a maximum of seven invitations from tournament sponsors, you can play your way onto the Tour by earning money equal to the 125th man on the official money list at year's end, a route followed in recent memory only by Justin Leonard and Woods.

Howell won $263,000 last year after turning pro, equivalent to No. 143 on the money list. But the Tour ruled that since he wasn't a member, he couldn't be given "conditional status," which allows Tour members ranked 126-150 as many sponsor's exemptions as they can wrangle the succeeding year. Howell learned this two weeks before Stage 2 of Q-School. (His play had earned him a waiver from Stage 1.) Using replacement clubs after his were lost by the airline on the way to the tournament, he missed getting into the finals by two shots. "All of a sudden I had nowhere to play," says Howell. "That'll get your attention in a hurry, believe me."

Plan B: Go back out this year, play on sponsor's exemptions, earn enough early on to secure conditional status the rest of the way, then finish in the top 125, a magic number that will be about $465,000. Since he's already won $401,000 in 10 starts, and plans to play eight events in nine weeks, Howell looks like a lock, provided he remembers his tee times.

Six years ago at the Masters, Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer lavished praise on Woods, who hadn't turned pro yet. This year, both were similarly full of praise for Howell, whom they'd invited to tournaments they host -- Nicklaus on national TV at the Memorial, Palmer in front of the press at Bay Hill. Neither has seen fit to single out anyone else as a logical or likely rival to Woods.

"I take this as a huge compliment," says Howell, "and not as extra pressure. I already know I want to challenge Tiger and beat him. But I've got a lot of work to do."

The Old School order of business for a young pro is a five-step program: card, cuts, money, top-10s, win. Now, Howell's no dummy. He was Big 12 Student Athlete of the Year in 2000. He left OSU with a 3.76 GPA over three years. But somehow, he just can't get that Old School rule into his head.

"It goes back a lot to what Tiger's done," says Howell, who cried the day he lost to Woods in the quarterfinals of the 1996 U.S. Amateur. He was a 130-pound high school junior at the time. Woods was a week from turning pro. Howell was wearing a cap that said No Fear. The idea stuck.

"You get guys saying they're trying to make cuts, and then you get Tiger saying he's going to win," says Howell. "Sir, who do you think is going to win?" Howell is as unfailingly polite -- he says "sir" more often than a military academy cadet -- as he is positive: "If you set your goal high and you miss, you still might do all right."

Howell bombs it off the tee-longer even than Tiger -- but where he's really long is with his irons. At this year's GHO, Howell averaged 298 yards with the driver, hit an astounding 76% of the fairways and hit no more than a 9-iron second shot on half the par-4's and 5's over the four days.

Of course, all of today's young guns prefer carpet bombing to strategic strafing. But when you ask Howell if he comes from the John Daly Grip It and Rip It School, his eyes narrow a little, as if he's trying to put John Daly in focus: John Daly, John Daly -- let's see, he won the PGA in 1991, when I was 12. Then Howell, 3 1/2 years younger than Woods, snaps to: "No, sir. I'm the oldest of the generation that got to look up to Tiger. We pattern our golf games after his. That means getting it out there as far as you can to be in a better position to score."

Raw, in golf, usually translates as inconsistent, and that's where Howell's game is right now. He has all the tools, but still has to learn to pack them every day of every tournament. One week, his driver might be off. Next week, his putting. At Hartford, his short-iron play looked rusty.

This year's GHO, in fact, aptly illustrated Howell's season -- and his promise. When he wasn't right with his approaches, he left himself a lot of par saves and 30-foot birdie tries. He made 16 birdies. He also made nine bogeys. The result: so-so middle rounds of 72-70 (2 over) sandwiched between a 66 and a 65 (9 under), a tie for 29th -- and another $19K towards his 2002 card.

Same song, different verse the following week at the Western Open, the only difference being that this time the so-so rounds alternated with the good ones: 72, 69, 73, 68. Similar result: a tie for 37th, a $16K paycheck.

Consistency emerges from familiarity with courses and confidence in your ability. Howell will learn the courses, and -- along with a good head on his shoulders and nuclear power at the end of his hands -- he's got confidence. To burn.

That's clear enough when you hear him, on the first anniversary of his turning pro, sitting in an empty corporate tent after a round, talking politely about the past-but really boring in on his future. He mentions Tiger Woods at least half a dozen times. He doesn't mention wanting to win a tournament, aside from the Masters. He doesn't mention wanting to lead the money list. He doesn't mention wanting to be the No. 1-ranked player in the world. But he does mention his goal -- "to be the best player in the world" -- at least half a dozen times. That's not the sort of goal you have if you're short on confidence.

Dad Charles Howell Jr., a pediatric surgeon, helped build that confidence by squiring his son to junior golf tournaments all over the country -- and by getting out of his way. When little Charles started playing well as a kid, Dr. Howell quit the game. (They were spending too much time looking for Dad's errant shots.) He did, however, maintain the family membership in the Augusta Country Club, whose ninth fairway abuts Amen Corner.

Howell is lean but sneaky strong. At OSU, where Coach Holder's boot camp approach to conditioning has helped turn out championship teams for years, Howell went from a 130-pound weakling to a 5'11", 155-pound power pack who can bench 225 pounds. He also has what must be the largest hands in the game-think XXXL golf glove.

For a straight-line, goal-oriented guy, Howell has a couple of impetuous moves on his résumé. Like turning pro -- why wait? -- without alerting Mom and Dad. Or planning to marry his college sweetheart of two and a half years this coming December, then -- why wait? -- deciding in April to do it on Maui in June, the week before Hartford.

"Heather understands I want to be the best player in the world," Howell says of his wife, the former Heather Myers, who was Oklahoma 4A leader in steals for two years at point guard for Kingfisher High. "She understands competitiveness, the way to win." (If she didn't before she met Charles, it probably dawned on her after a few trips to Orlando to work with Ledbetter. "We've been there so often," she says, "there should be a bronze plaque in front of David's guesthouse.")

They put their honeymoon on hold -- that can wait -- so Charles could play six straight golf tournaments beginning the week after their wedding. During a round, Heather delivers protein shakes and water to her husband, whose metabolism rate is so high he actually loses weight if he sugar-loads on doughnuts or brownies, which he avoids along with all red meat. And, like a politician's better half, Mrs. Howell III works the ropes beside him as he signs autographs after rounds. She returns to OSU for her senior year in August, but with Tuesday-Thursday classes, she plans to make it out on tour every week Charles plays.

You get the feeling that, at some level, Charles wouldn't mind going back to Stillwater with her. "If you're ready for the PGA Tour at 17, great, but have a life," says Howell, who enjoyed his college days without ever trying a beer or a smoke. "Go to college. Wake up late, go to class in shorts and a tank top, sit in the back row and talk to football and basketball players. Have fun. This is the greatest place ever, but I have to be an adult now."

As the man says, he's 22 going on 30. He has a coach and family devoted to his success. He has a wife, endorsement contracts and a leased jet. And he knows some people are going to wonder about his priorities: "I have no interest in anything else. With everything taken care of, there's nothing left to do except be the best player in the world."

To do that, the Next Tiger first has to make enough money to join the PGA Tour-that looks like a gimme. He has to win-and nobody who's seen him play doubts he will, and soon. Next up is "to challenge Tiger and to beat him." That could take some time, which he has, and figures to be a whole lot harder, which he knows. But he's got the game. And he's got a focused, competitive attitude unmatched by anyone else in golf.

Well, except for that one other guy.

This article appears in the July 23 issue of ESPN The Magazine.