Older players are Tiger Woods’s biggest threat in next week’s Masters
Andy Capostagno
When Tiger Woods won the 1997 United States Masters with a record- breaking score of 270 everyone else was told to pack up and go home. Jack Nicklaus, the man who Woods measures himself against, said Tiger would win more Masters tournaments than he and Arnold Palmer put together (11). But the organisers of the Masters took that as a slight and set about Tiger-proofing Augusta National, adding new tees and, most controversially of all, growing the rough for the first time in the tournament’s history. Since then Woods has failed to win the Masters for a second time and, until the weekend last year, had failed even to break 70 in 10 starts.
So why is it that in the latest betting Woods is 3-1 for the title, but you have to go down to a distant 10-1 to find the next contenders? Simply because while Ernie Els, Davis Love and Phil Mickelson are all fine players they are mortal. Woods, the current holder of all the majors bar the Masters, has a chance to join the immortals if he wins next week. And why should he not win? He will have had a week off to rest and practise after back-to-back wins at the Players’ Championship and the Bay Hill Invitational and in the past year he has taken his game to a level that few have known in the history of golf.
The few consist of Robert Jones, Ben Hogan and Nicklaus. In 1930 Jones won the US and British Amateurs and the US and British Opens and with no new worlds to conquer set about devising the Masters. It would be fitting if Woods were to win next week on Jones’s beloved Augusta National, thus becoming the first golfer in history to hold the four modern major titles simultaneously. But while it would be fitting it is hardly likely to happen. For a start, installing Woods as such an outrageous favourite is a slap in the face to a field filled with great players.
Defending champion Vijay Singh is as hot as Woods at the moment, having won back-to-back himself in Asia last month. And had his tee shot on the 14th at Ponte Vedra not found a watery grave on Sunday he might have pipped Woods at the Players’ Championship. And then there are all the players who have gone head to head with Woods this year and won. Players like Jim Furyk, Mark Calcavecchia, Love, Mickelson, Joe Durant and Thomas Bjorn.
Bjorn beat Woods into second place at the Dubai Desert Classic three weeks ago after playing alongside him for all four rounds. He is preposterously priced at 60-1 for the Masters and those who saw the Dane at the Nedbank Golf Challenge in December will attest to the fact that he is ready to win a major. No, the best that can be said of Woods is that, of the contenders in the invited field he is the likeliest winner. That would be enough for a normal tournament, but that description does not fit the Masters.
A normal tournament does not allow a washed-up pro waiting for the Seniors Tour to win the week after being a pallbearer at his coach’s funeral. That was Ben Crenshaw, winning his second Masters in 1995 after dedicating his performance to the late Harvey Penick. A normal tournament does not allow a man to win his first major championship at the age of 42 and then inspire him to win another in the same year. That was Mark O’Meara in 1998 and the defending champion who handed over the green jacket was Woods, who was almost exactly half his age.
Which brings us to the most revealing statistic of all. The Masters is not a young man’s tournament. No one under 30 has won it in the past decade with the sole exception of Woods, who was 21. In the second year of Tiger-proofing Jose-Maria Olazabal, one of the shortest and most crooked drivers in the game, won his second Masters. More than any other major, the Masters proves year in and year out one of PJ O’Rourke’s finest dictums; “Age and guile beat youth, innocence and a bad haircut.”