Magic from Woods transformed Masters
AUGUSTA, Ga. -- Normally at Augusta National Golf Club, perfection isn't an abstract concept, it's a state of being. Normally with the Masters, one walks on a velvet green carpet, all the while embraced by mystique and intoxicated by the beauty of azaleas.
But for three days this year, it was different. There was confusion and contentiousness, rain and lightning, ankle-high mud and a rancid odor, unfinished rounds of golf and disjointed starts to golf. So much went wrong, in fact, that it was felt that if the 2005 Masters was going to be the special memory it annually is, a miracle was needed.
Enter Tiger Woods, part magician, part maestro, part matador.
Sunday, he turned one of the most forgettable Masters into yet another unforgettable one. He did it with a patented charge in the morning, an impossible shot in the afternoon, and a character-defining putt in the evening. Was it the recipe for his fourth Masters victory? Yes. His ninth major championship? Yes. A coronation to mark his return to kinghood? Not so fast.
No question Woods was immense, but it would be a rush to say he was vintage 1999-2002, when he was winning seven of 11 major championships. The middle two rounds, when he made 16 birdies in 36 holes? At a course that was playing painfully difficult? Under the most intense pressure? It's just the latest chapter to add to his book of legendary feats.
But so, too, did Woods show that perhaps we shouldn't expect a return to his former dominating self, that he's not the near-unbeatable force he once was. Back then, his swing had been tightened, his misses were rare, his course-management skills extraordinary. The surest thing in pro sports back then was Woods with the lead, because he had a swing that, while powerful, was built more around control -- hence the fact that in 1999-2002 he ranked first, first, 12th, and second in ball-striking.
Woods is committed to a bigger, more powerful swing these days and with three victories in seven stroke-play tournaments, you'd have a hard time arguing that he shouldn't stick with it.
Just don't expect it to be flawless, because Woods showed Sunday there are cracks in the foundation of the new swing. Just as there were wild shots on the 72d holes of the Buick Invitational and the Ford Championship at Doral, Woods leaked it right on key swings Sunday -- a drive at the 17th and an approach at the 18th. Those swings could have cost him the tournament, only he is still the most clutch player of his generation. What they did show is that the Woods we are now watching just may be more entertaining than the Woods of 1999-2002, because he's not a precision machine; he's a bit wild at times, and he's having to work harder for it.
"Just a bad shot at the wrong time," said Woods of his flare into the bunker at the 72d hole, when an approach onto the green would have wrapped up the green jacket in regulation.
What was lost in the late-afternoon drama is the fact Woods could have put this thing away earlier in the morning. When he made his seventh consecutive birdie in Round 3, at the par-5 13th, in the resumption of the third round, he was 13 under. He also had gone from four behind Chris DiMarco to three ahead in just four holes and surely Woods knew he was in position to put down the hammer. Only he bogeyed the 14th with three putts, then came up short with a 6-iron at the par-5 15th, his ball became embedded in the bank in front of the green, and he made another bogey.
Instead of running away, Woods let DiMarco hang in there. Instead of keeping the foot down, Woods played the last 23 holes of regulation in 1 over.
Of course, he still is in possession of a killer short game and an imagination that is second to none, which is why he left DiMarco to yet another Augusta National heartache, his third top-10 finish in five starts.
"I shot 68 around here on Sunday, which is a very good round," said DiMarco, who had put himself in a desperate hole by taking 41 strokes around the back nine to finish the third round Sunday morning. "I just was playing against Tiger Woods."
Woods's pitch-in birdie from behind the green at the par-3 16th was a shot that will live in Masters folklore. Not because it was impossible, but because it was an impossible shot at a time when he just had to come through. It was vintage Woods, as was the 15-foot birdie putt at the first playoff hole. But in between? The 17th and 18th, to end regulation? That was the new Woods, the one who is still a force, though a more adventuresome force.
What hasn't changed is Woods's presence. He's still the game's best show, the only one who can turn a mud bath into a masterpiece. In that regard, this year's Masters may have been his best. People are talking about his chip-in birdie, his clutch putt at the playoff hole, and that's a change from previous days, when the only substantial stories concerned yet more unruly weather, a dispute over spike marks on greens between Vijay Singh and Phil Mickelson, and the fact officials inexplicably left players hanging late Saturday as they tried to get the third round started.
Talk about bizarre. Here were the game's greatest players at the sport's grandest tournament, all of them milling around the putting green, wondering if they had time to hit balls, because they didn't know their tee times. Tournament officials blamed a computer glitch, but players weren't sympathetic. Bernhard Langer told reporters that he's seen junior tournaments run better and Adam Scott couldn't stop laughing at a scene he witnessed.
"We were all just throwing the balls up and picking a partner," said the young Aussie. "Luke [Donald] and I thought we'd go off together. He wanted to go off one, but I had to go off 10."
Strange stuff? Definitely. Just as it was so strange to see balls hanging up on the false fronts and not riding the slopes back down the fairway, all because officials were unable to cut the grass for three days. Certainly, a different Augusta National landscape, yet for good or bad, it was what we were left with for three days.
At least until Woods once again worked his magic.
