Stewart Cink hit up Mellow Mushroom for some trivia before Bible study Wednesday, then made a run to Starbucks, did some grocery shopping and hit the pharmacy for some allergy medication before his 1:10 p.m. tee time Thursday.

And more than 35,000 of his closest friends read all about it on Twitter, the social networking site that is taking hold around the world, as well as on the PGA Tour.

Cink is one of a handful of PGA Tour players who are hooked on the microblogging site, where users post updates of 140 characters or less about anything and everything that crosses their minds. Even the PGA Tour itself and several individual tournaments have Twitter accounts.

"Our goal is to find new ways to communicate with golf fans," said Lee Bushkell, vice president and general manager of PGATour.com. "Particularly with Twitter, because it's such a global tool, it's an immediate way to tell people what's going on."

The tour has been active on Twitter since the Players Championship last May, when social media and fan outreach coordinator Lauren Beyer launched the initiative. At that time, Bushkell said it had only about 400,000 users, but that number has increased exponentially in the past year, and even in the past month.

According to a recent comScore report, Twitter grew 131 percent between February and March to 9.3 million unique U.S. visitors in March alone, and the service reports traffic to the microblogging site has increased more than 700 percent worldwide in the past year and more than 1,000 percent in the United States during the same time frame.

As the Twitter universe has expanded, so has the tour's dedication to getting updated tweets to its followers. What started as a one-person operation, with Beyer doing all the tweeting, has evolved into an army of tweeters with laptops and smartphones.

"Almost all of our content team contributes tweets," Bushkell said. "Our site producers, our on-site writers, our talent, all of those people, as well as Lauren, all contribute to it, which we think gives a very comprehensive picture. We try to give people something that they can't get just by following the leaderboard or just by watching on television. We give them an inside-the-ropes access point."

Sometimes that access continues outside the ropes, as it does in Cink's case. The two-time Heritage champ first heard of Twitter while watching ESPN's "Pardon the Interruption," and he quickly became hooked.

"I signed up for an account and started just messing around, sending out a few little, dumb messages," Cink said. "Pretty soon, I realized that my followers were growing and people cared about what I said.

"It turns out that it's really been a great way to make direct contact, unfiltered contact, with a fan base that's out there that I don't know otherwise," Cink added. "Without using the media, without using TV cameras or anything, I can just say what I want. Sometimes I share a little insight about golf, sometimes I just talk about my life. It's been great just to be able to connect with people in a way that I would have never, ever made a connection."

And that's what social media sites like Twitter are all about -- making connections. With more than 4,000 followers subscribing to @PGATOUR, Bushkell thinks he and his staff are achieving that goal.

"The tour is something that people wish to be affiliated with and learn more about, and Twitter does that," Bushkell said. "For us, it's extremely important to engage our audience through this, because we think it's good for the fan."

As social media sites gain popularity, they bring with them a new lexicon, and Twitter carries the most complex language of all. Use this glossary to sound like you've been tweeting for years.

Tweeter or Twitterer

noun

A person who uses Twitter. Some of the most famous tweeters include Shaquille O'Neal and Ashton Kutcher.

Tweet

verb (-ing)

The act of posting an update on Twitter.

noun

An update posted on Twitter; must be 140 characters or fewer.

Tweep

noun

Someone who is following you on Twitter.

@reply

noun

A tweet directed at another tweep, signified by starting the post with @[username]. @replies are not private; they appear in the public stream of tweets.

Hash tag

noun

The # sign. This is used to categorize tweets by subject. For tweets about the Heritage, @PGATOUR has suggested using #vhpga.

Re-tweet

verb

Re-posting someone else's tweet. Usually preceeded by "RT" and @[username]. Tweeters sometimes ask their tweeps to re-tweet a post so more users will see it.

'TWEEPS' YOU NEED TO KNOW

You can stumble onto a lot of news and analysis by following the right "tweeps" on Twitter during this week's Verizon Heritage. Here are some of the people who are tweeting about the tournament:

@PGATOUR -- The official tweets of the PGA Tour, Champions Tour and Nationwide Tour keep you in tune with golf news around the world.

@stewartcink -- PGA Tour veteran and two-time Heritage champ Stewart Cink tweets about a little bit of everything, on and off the course.

@ParkerMcLachlin -- PGA Tour player Parker McLachlin doesn't tweet as frequently as Cink, but who does?

@BackNineSTL - Back Nine Radio show tweeting about upcoming show guests on the weekly radio show