AUGUSTA, Ga. - After the first game of Friday's Masters doubleheader, a bottle blond Gen-Xer had smoked Tiger Woods by seven strokes. Ricky Barnes, 22 years old and still breathing youth's immortal air, played Woods head-to-head, and said later, "I treated him like another player out there." Unlike his professional peers, Barnes actually played like he meant that. Barnes shot 69, Woods 76.

In a Masters week fractured by monsoons and Martha, we aren't expecting much. Having to play 36 holes (or as many as daylight permitted) on the first day is just another kick in the teeth. Two Masters rounds in one day, battling Augusta National's waxed greens, is not what Ernie Banks had in mind.

Long day's journey

A problem with going 36 in one day is, if you were lost in your first round, you probably weren't going to be found in your second.

Normally if you play poorly, you can go beat some balls, then your head against the wall of your rented bedroom. Have a nice dinner, watch some tube, go to bed believing things will be better in the morning. That wasn't happening in Friday's doubleheader, when the break between rounds was 20 minutes.

"What do you think?" spat Darren Clarke, after 18 holes, when someone asked him how he felt about playing 18 more. And Clarke was leading.

Woods' 76 included a chip-in bogey at No. 1 and no birdies at all. The last time Tiger played a birdie-free round, he was Eldrick. Woods showed up to practice at 8:30 and didn't make his first birdie until 5:30, on his 22nd hole.

He spent a few minutes chatting outside the scorer's tent between rounds, blaming a badly raked bunker for one bogey and some poorly mown grass for another. Meanwhile, Barnes, U.S. Amateur champion, was living the dream.

"Yeah, he's probably dumb enough" to think he can beat Woods, said Barnes' brother Andy, who is also his caddie. "He's probably right," Ricky Barnes said. Ricky is too young to know better. He has yet to come off the course looking Phil Mickelson-ed, after playing a great round and losing ground to Woods. He hasn't tried too hard trying to catch Tiger on a Sunday afternoon.

Nothing to lose

Barnes doesn't know what he doesn't know. That's a good thing.

Andy has spent the week telling him not to pay attention to Woods' shots. "It's your game," Andy told him. "Hit your own shots."

Barnes is taller than Tiger, bigger than Tiger, hits his tee shots as far as Tiger and plays golf like a linebacker, for good and ill. He made a birdie at the 510-yard 13th hitting a driver, then a lob wedge to within 8 feet of the hole. But he opened his second round by badly yanking his approach left at No. 10, pitching through the green and making bogey.

"So far, so good. It's a work in progress," Andy said. "Ricky has nothing to lose. At the end of the week, he gets a nice pat on the back."

Woods is playing for something bigger. He's eight shots out of the lead and three behind Barnes, gunning for a record third Masters win in a row. Woods and Barnes finished 28 holes. The only thing inevitable was darkness.

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