KAREN CROUSEtakes a look behind the moustache of a player who has blazed an early trail in America

JOHNSON WAGNER, the FedEx Cup points leader heading into this week's Phoenix Open on the USPGA Tour, looks like a character from the 1972 movie Deliverance.

Blame the moustache, which Wagner started growing around Thanksgiving Day and credits for his three top-10 finishes last month, including a victory at the Sony Open and a tie for second at the Humana Challenge.

According to Wagner, he has had to develop a hard shell and swagger to fend off the cries from people, beginning with his loved ones, to 'shear the 'stache'.

In truth, Johnson's stiff upper lip in competition can be traced to the family golf games he played growing up, contentious rounds that featured thrown clubs and hurled invectives - mostly by Wagner's mother, Betty. Her sons describe her as the fiercest competitor in the family, with Wagner running a close second. It's probably not a coincidence that he and his mother always ended up on the same team, bound like sticks of kindling.

'I guess nobody else could stand being paired with us,' Betty Wagner said with a throaty laugh during a telephone interview from her home in North Carolina.

She added: 'I've never been much of a girlie girl, and having two boys just enhanced my tomboyishness and love of trash talk. If either of my boys ever acted the way I have on the course, neither would be golfers. I would have yanked them off the course so fast it would make your head spin. I always told them, 'You better do what I say and not as I do'.

Wagner (31) learned the lesson well, endearing himself to spectators and tournament volunteers who stop his parents when they are in his galleries to comment on his graciousness and good cheer. His facial hair has won him new fans; at the Humana Challenge, his followers included men wearing fake moustaches.

The changes in his appearance go deeper than his follicles. Wagner turned pro after winning the Metropolitan Amateur and the Metropolitan Open in 2001 and 2002 and spent four years on the Nationwide Tour. After missing 10 cuts in 25 starts on the USPGA Tour last year - his only top-10 finish was a victory in Cancun in February - Wagner began working with a trainer based in North Carolina. He has lost 15 pounds while increasing his strength and flexibility and, in turn, his confidence.

'I worked harder this off season, me personally, than I've ever dreamed of,' he said. 'My dad thought I was on speed or something. I just had all of this energy from working out,' he added.

At the Sony Open, Wagner sat two strokes behind the leaders after 54 holes and was among six players who had a share of the lead during a turbulent final round. He secured the victory with a bogey-free back nine. It was Wagner's third PGA Tour victory.

This year he has taken a different approach, and it appears to be paying off. Wagner has broken 70 in his last 11 competitive rounds, including an opening 68 in the Phoenix Open.

'I want to continually get better every day,' he said. 'There's no flat-lining in golf. It's so cliche, but if you're not getting better, you're getting worse';

So great was Wagner's enthusiasm for making contact with the ball as a youngster, he would run up and make a swing without stopping to address the ball. His maternal grandfather, MT Johnson discouraged his daughter from correcting Wagner.

'He told me: 'You just hush. Just let him have a love of golf,' she said. The game became the magnet that pulled the family enduringly close. Starting when Wagner was 10 or 11 and his brother, TJ, who was 13 or 14, the family played every weekday during the summer months. They were the first foursome off at Springhouse Golf Club in Nashville, and the losing team would have to get sodas for the winning one.

The family foursome still gathers for the occasional round together, most recently on Mother's Day. The combativeness that Wagner learned to bottle up on the golf course is uncorked when the family gathers to play board games. 'Both my brother's wife and mine have been brought to tears,' Wagner said. Not surprisingly, his mother often ends up his partner by default. 'No one wants to be Johnson's partner in a board game,' she said. 'He is so volatile.'

On the course, Wagner's facial hair is the most untamed thing about him.

'Kind of made a deal with myself in December that if I was to get into the Masters, then I was going to keep the moustache for at least this year,' said Wagner, who qualified to compete at Augusta National with his victory in Honolulu. 'So I think it's going to be around for a while.' New York Times