Just when it appeared Tiger Woods would leap golf’s all-time record book in a single bound, he…well, hard to call it a collapse when he finished fifth after opening Doral, one of his favorite courses with rounds of 67-66.
But Tiger was passed like he was in an old Model-T instead of one of his slick Buick rides with his par 72 third round in his last tuneup before the Masters. Still, a final 68 in the raindelayed tournament left him just two shots behind 2006 U.S. Open champion Geoff Ogilvy. The Puma – Ogilvy’s clothing and shoe sponsor – raced past the Tiger.
What does it mean going into this year’s Masters Tournament?
Well, two-time United States Open champion Retief Goosen, who has finished second twice and third twice in the last six Masters, was a shot up on Woods and seems back on his game. Three-time major champion (one the 2000 Masters) Vijay Singh and Jim Furyk also were ahead of Woods. Singh’s been going back and forth with his putters, traditional to belly and back again but he’s been consistently better with the belly blade.
Defending Masters champion Zach Johnson and When’s-he-going-to-get-a-major Adam Scott tied for ninth.
Johnson’s smart. He played his game last year, laying up on all the par-5s and he birdied 11 of the 16 for the tournament. Scott is a Butch Harmon pupil who has the game and has won the Players and Tour Championship, but not a major.
Woods certainly is the favorite to slip into the green jacket for the fifth time but not often have so many tournament winners been at the top of their game. Include two-time Masters champion Phil Mickelson, a winner earlier this year and working well with Butch Harmon for a year now.
The caution is the two weeks of the ho-hum New Orleans and Houston tournaments between Doral and the Masters. Will they all be ready? Scott, Mickelson, Ogilvy and British Open champion Padraig Harrington entered Houston while Woods stayed home, but it’s a given he’ll be ready. He’s said he expects to win every tournament he enters, but when it’s a major, he really expects to win.
One thing is certain. Woods won’t be startled by any cameras, as he was at Doral when he threatened to break the neck, in Tour fine-provoking language, of a photographer. Only Tour-veteran photographers make it to Augusta and not even they are permitted inside the ropes. And fans’ (“patrons”) cell phones and cameras are confiscated at the gates.
Nor does anyone yell “In the hole!” at the Augusta National Golf Club.
Woods respects Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus and while he will pass them in virtually every category, the one he won’t is temper control. In 40-plus years of covering Palmer and Nicklaus at major championships, I never heard either one even say “damn” or “hell” let alone cuss out anyone.
Now about the tournament. As always, there’ve been some tweaks in the course that baffled everyone last year – Johnson’s 1overpar 289 matched the highest winning score in Masters history. Sam Snead won with that in 1954 and Jackie Burke in 1956.
Last year’s Masters was a cold one with temperatures in the 40s to low 50s and wind gusts of 33 miles-an-hour for the Saturday round. Goosen was the only one of the field of 60 to break par and he did it with a 70. Johnson had a 76. Only 13 players broke par Sunday and the low scores were 69s by Johnson and Goosen and Rory Sabbatini who were tied with Woods. Tiger failed to break par in any round.
Wind and slick greens is a combination to beat the best and it did.
The course changes this year are minimal, but two will make it better for gallery viewing – adding 10 yards to the front of the first tee and removing some of former Chairman Hootie Johnson’s pine forest on the right side of the 11th fairway. Strong northwest winds made it difficult for some players to get it past the bunker on the right side of the uphill first fairway and moving the tee up opened room for the gallery to move behind it. The area by the first and 10th tees with the ninth and 18th greens in between plus the putting green resulted in gallery gridlock.
The seventh hole, formerly one of the shortest on the course, has had 75-85 yards added, but the shallow, shelved green need more room and six feet were added to the left and a bunker moved back. The uphill ninth green, where many approach shots rolled back down the steep hill, should be easier with softening on the right side.
Like all three of the American majors, the Masters is lengthy at 7,445 yards. The changes over the years since Bobby Jones invited friends over in 1934 for a little event have kept the Masters the favorite of the majors – Spring in Augusta, the masses of azaleas along the 13th hole, rhododendrons, massive Spanish mossdraped oaks, towering Loblolly pine trees, dogwoods in bloom, centuryold magnolias at the club entrance – Magnolia Lane, and only members and players drive up it and no one is permitted to walk it.
Augusta was President Eisenhower’s favorite retreat with a cabin built for him in 1953. He made 45 trips to Augusta, 29 times during his presidency. But famously, the Commander-in-Chief did not rule Augusta. When Eisenhower suggested at a club meeting in 1956 that a tall and wide pine tree in the 17th fairway that caught many of his drives be removed, crusty chairman Clifford Roberts, who co-founded the club with Jones, ruled Eisenhower out of order and closed the meeting.
The history of the tournament is known to all golf fans, the shots – Gene Sarazen’s double eagle on the 15th that got him into a playoff, Larry Mize’s long chip to beat Greg Norman in the 1987 Masters, Fred Couples’ ball hanging on the bank of the 12th hole, Nicklaus’ birdie on the 16th, Tiger’s logoed Swish pausing and falling in the cup on 16, the victories of Byron Nelson, Sam Snead and Ben Hogan, then Palmer and Nicklaus and now Woods and Mickelson and three victories by Englishman Nick Faldo and doubles by Spaniards Seve Ballesteros and Jose Maria Olazabal.
This year another of the Masters’ special places and events, the Par-3 course, will be televised for the first time, 2-4 p.m. CDT, on ESPN.
The No. 1 constant of the Masters is that it continually moves forward. And always with excitement.