David Davies Golf
Tiger Woods, for whom record breaking seems to be the normal situation, has equalled one of the more unlikely marks in golf, and is now in pursuit of one of the most preposterous.
The world number one, whose win at the Pebble Beach National Pro-Am this week took his successive United States Tour victories to six, thereby equalling the number set by Ben Hogan in 1948, now has nothing between him and the all-time best – the 11 successive tournaments won by Byron Nelson in 1945.
The American’s schedule over the next two months gives him a theoretical chance at least of breaking a record that no one has believed, until now, could be broken when he plays the US Masters at Augusta National in April.
Although the odds against him must be mountainous, if Woods were to succeed no summit could be more appropriate. For it was at Augusta, in 1997, that he petrified the rest of the golf world by winning the Masters – his first professional major champion-ship – by the almost obscene margin of 12 shots. The Augusta authorities, who at first said they would not toughen their course in an effort to prevent a repeat of such embarrassment, have since done exactly that.
It was that year at Augusta, too, that Woods received what amounted to a benediction from Jack Nicklaus. At the halfway stage of the tournament Woods was leading by two shots after a second round of 66, but the greatest golfer in the history of the game so far sensed what was happening.
Thirty-four years earlier, when Nicklaus himself won the Masters, tournament founder Bob Jones had said: “Mr Nicklaus plays a game with which I am not familiar.” Now Nicklaus paraphrased him: “It is a shame Bob Jones isn’t here. He could have saved the words for me in 1963 for this young man, because he’s playing a game we are certainly not familiar with.”
That was true of Augusta in 1997 and it was also true of Pebble Beach. Woods, who began the final day five behind the rookie Matt Gogel, was seven behind with eight holes to play before birdying the 12th. He failed to birdie the long 14th, but the entire tournament changed at the shortish par-four downhill 15th.
Woods hit a big drive and a sand-wedge second that landed to the right of the pin before spinning back into the hole for an eagle.
The end result was an eight-under-par 64, a 15-under total of 273, a sixth successive win and, along with the trophy presented to him by Clint Eastwood, a first prize of $720 000. That takes Woods’s winnings from the six events to $4 592 000 compared with the $63 355 worth of war bonds Nelson won for his 11 events.
Nelson (88) watched Woods from his home in Texas and said: “You have to be amazed by Tiger. You just have to be. Nobody does it like he does.”
When “nobody” was queried Nelson replied: “Nope. I won’t compare myself with him. I get more publicity now because of Tiger Woods than I got the whole time back then. There were only a few people talking to me about it in those days, very little publicity, not even a 10th of what Tiger gets.”
Nelson was a golfer who played professionally for as long as it took to make enough money to buy a ranch and retire, which he did at the end of the 1946 season. “I got sick and tired of competing,” he said. “Nobody understands, but I never did feel I quit too soon.”
Despite that, the quality of Nelson’s golf should never be underestimated. He had 25 rounds of 66 and his stroke average throughout “the streak”, as his run is known, was 67,86. Woods, in his six wins, averages 68,21.
“That’s probably what I am most proud of,” said Nelson. “To win 11 in a row you have to make great scores almost every day and that’s what I did. Everyone says my record is unbreakable, but I’ll tell you what – Woods goes hard, he doesn’t back off and he makes his putts.You have to like someone like that.”