Sunday, April 09, 2000
Just getting even can give Tiger the edge
BY PAUL DAUGHERTY
The Cincinnati Enquirer
AUGUSTA, Ga. — To avoid becoming just another 24-year-old major millionaire predicted to be the greatest golfer who ever lived, Tiger Woods needed to get to even par Saturday.
This was his hunch. Shoot a 69. Get from 3 over par to even after three rounds. Appear at the bottom of the leaderboard. Let those above him take note.
Behold: Me. There to haunt you. Again.
The weather turned Scottish at the Masters Saturday afternoon. Wind and rain and chill. Because of a two-hour weather delay, the leaders played in gusty conditions. Worse, they didn't finish. Even worse, the forecast is no better for this morning, when they have to go out early and resume their Saturday rounds.
As Davis Love III noted late in the afternoon: “The flags are blowing so loud, it sounds like somebody's shooting a gun out there. These guys playing right now are not real happy about their situation.”
Every year here, the goal of the best players is to survive the first three days, so today is relevant. Tiger Woods managed that Saturday.
Clutch on Saturday
Woods shot a 68 when anything worse might have eliminated him from consideration. He ran off four straight birdies, the last at the 10th hole, then immediately had to endure the momentum-busting delay.
“A little disconcerting,” he said. “I had the rhythm of the round, the flow of my swing working.”
No matter. Woods needed birdies on the two back-nine par-5s. He got them, with the sort of ease that suggested he expected them. He was on each green in two; his birdie putts were 3 feet.
Woods also saved a par at No.4, with a flop shot from over a bunker that stopped 2 feet from the hole. He birdied the par-5 8th with a similar play, lobbing a pitching wedge over a mound to the top of a slope, then watching the ball feed down to the hole. It did, to about 6 feet.
Those two shots were about as easy as landing a 747 on the kitchen table.
We're starting to get a focus on the kind of player Woods might be for the next 30 years, if he chooses to play that long. That is, one whose talent is exceeded only by his confidence. Woods started the day nine shots out of the lead. He had to play Saturday morning like it was Sunday afternoon. The great players can summon the nerve, the will and the performance to pull that off, and they can do it with the whole world watching.
“People were saying I was completely out of it. I'm not out of it,” Woods said.
The hype that now swallows every event and athlete of consequence has not eluded golf. The notion that Woods should win simply because he's Woods is silly. In his heyday between 1963 and 1986, Jack Nicklaus won six green jackets. That's one every four years, for Mr. Augusta National himself. During his best years, between '55 and '74, Arnold Palmer won here four times. Once every five years, on average.
“This is hard,” Woods has told us. We don't listen.
2 rounds of greatness?
The leaderboard is loaded with big resumes: David Duval, Ernie Els, Love, Vijay Singh. To win, Woods probably will have to play better today than he did Saturday.
Now is when we start looking at him for evidence of greatness. Win when everyone expects you to win. Win from way behind, against players with major tournament victories. Win by shooting a 66 or 67 in the crucible of an Augusta Sunday afternoon.
Somebody asked Woods how close he needed to be to the leaders heading into the last round. Eight to 10 shots, he said. Eight to 10, and the leaders might yip.
“It's different at a major championship,” Woods said. “Guys start thinking about where they're at when they're at the top of the leaderboard.”
Any good player can call upon greatness for a shot or a hole or a round. For two rounds? The last two rounds of the Masters?
One round down for Tiger Woods, on his way to establishing greatness. One to go.
Enquirer columnist Paul Daugherty welcomes your comments at (513)
768-8454.
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