2008 Masters: Tiger Woods Begins Stalking Golf's Grand Slam

by Christopher McIntosh
04/10/2008

With all apologies to the Daytona 500, it's time again for the South's Superbowl.

Today begins the 74th edition of the Masters, a "tradition unlike any other," as CBS reminds us annually. It also begins a litmus test on Southern sports fandom.

If I was feeling more froggy I'd say it was also a litmus test on modern Southern identity, but I'll leave that one alone.

Yesterday we had the par-3 tournament, as much of a sports jinx as a playoff tryst with Jessica Simpson, but a whole lot of fun nonetheless. No one who's won that tournament has won the actual Masters. Basically, the players get to show off to all those guys who sit back on Saturday and Sunday with the sock tans and sweaty forearms left over from their morning round. You know the guys, the ones who consistently critique the play, make fun of wayward shots, and follow up nearly every high profile miscue with, "I'm not saying I could make it on the tour, but I could do better than that."

Watch the par-3 tournament. The players are just goofing around. The pins are usually way, way short. Like about as short as the pins the sock tan geniuses have just played that morning.

And to rip off the previous slogan, the Masters participants prove time and again that "these guys are good."

There are so many hole-in-ones that they only show the dramatic ones on Sportscenter. Otherwise they'd have to devote half the show to them.

Think about that the next time someone says, "Come on, why can't you just keep it left, Vijay? You suck". Vijay may have just drained two holes in one yesterday and they were so pedestrian ESPN wouldn't even film them.

Holes in one that these guys would talk about for years.

But that's not why I watch. And it's not why the rest of the South watches.

I once read an article about the Kentucky Derby's place in sports that explained it like this. People mostly don't follow racing. People don't all follow sports. But this guy had been visiting a Buddhist shrine that first Saturday in May and, low and behold, as the only American he was greeted at breakfast with the simple question, "Who won the Derby"?

That's how deep our love affair with this tournament goes. My mom can tell you about Tiger Woods. She'll have the tournament on while she's doing something else, but it will be on. She hasn't picked up a club in decades and even then it was only to fill out a vacation foursome in deference to my dad (she mostly putted). My dad plays and will schedule his weekend around the tournament. Come Sunday afternoon, don't get between him and his TV. He's a generally gentle man at his age, but don't even try to disrupt his drinking in of the back 9.

Me? I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing when Larry Mize chipped in in overtime 20 tournaments ago to, in essence, hit a half court shot at the buzzer to deny Greg Norman another chance at winning the tournament both he and his game seemed destined for. So yeah, I'll be watching. Again.

Doesn't matter who you are or whether you even particularly care about the tournament itself. You do know someone who cares about the tournament. Just like the Superbowl. And just like the Superbowl it means that people have been sucked into it every year who otherwise originally couldn't tell you a nine-iron from a nine-wood.

There's so much about the tournament to love. The fact that the Masters is so stingy about the coverage that they only allow approximately 4 minutes of commercials an hour, meaning CBS has to show more golf and come up with more music to sear into our brains through video game theme-like repetition.

I love the Azaleas. I think it's a darned miracle that they bloom every single year and in such gorgeous fashion. For those of you who haven't been up close to a wall of Azalea bushes, I'm sorry. My family had a bunch of them in the front yard at one point and it was like being transported to Hawaii. I love the way they sit above the 12th hole, a weirdly incongruent frame on a hole that is considered so diabolical.

I love the back 9. Don't get me wrong, the front nine are not to be trifled with, but when you get into Amen corner, fire at the par 3 12th with nearly the whole tournament, and a very inviting water hazard, watching, then spin out into one of the eminently reachable par 5s, it's a swing that tournaments are made on.

Watching people desperately try and make up ground on 13 and 15, the par 5s, with Rae's Creek denying countless attempts at getting to 15 in 2, and by extension, denying many a tournament, is fascinating. Then comes 16 with its endlessly undulating backboard of a green, the Sunday pin placement tucked against the water hazard and the attitude of the hole that screams, "I dare you, I double dog dare you, to try and make up ground here." Hit it correctly and the ball feeds to the whole. Hit it a tiny bit left and your tournament is over.

And that doesn't even take into account the inordinate number of short putts missed on this hole due to nerves. Count the number you see under 10 feet. It's always astonishing. Finally, I love 18 with the patrons (we call them patrons, not fans) seemingly no more than 5 yards apart and an opening chute between pines apparently not much wider. This is the ultimate hold your breath hole. Get through the first fifty yards of your tee shot and then its really just a matter of how good a second shot you can hit. And even then, this hole sets up for drama as a shot to the left of the center right pin placement can leave you a very makeable 20 foot putt to win the tournament.

Just ask Mark O'Meara.

Mostly, though, these days I love Tiger Woods. I love the fact that every stroke he takes, every trophy he wins, every step he takes down the fairways, is a single finger salute to the man and a demonstration of what striving for greatness can do. Who doesn't remember the "I'm Tiger Woods" commercials? Who doesn't remember him finishing off that magical 18 under 12 stroke victory for his first major at the course he was destined to dominate and burying himself in the arms of his drill sergeant father? How can we not marvel at what we've seen transform before our eyes in about 10(ish) short years?

But this year is even a slight bit different. Put it this way: the man who lives for majors has made the Masters almost an afterthought.

It's merely number one in his quest to hold all four trophies in one calendar year and complete the Grand Slam.

An interviewer recently asked him a simple question, if you had to choose, "Tiger Woods or Jack Nicklaus?"

Without even blinking he immediately and forcefully said, "Tiger Woods."

He didn't hem and haw or give a pat answer, he answered the question practically before it was out of the interviewers mouth.

When the guy followed up, somewhat incredulous, Tiger said, kind of sheepish, with that brilliant smile of his, "I mean, you have to believe in yourself, don't you?"

I'll be watching. I presume you will be, too.

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