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It is
almost tempting to joke today about the fact that Tiger
Woods got to within four victories of winning the 2008
Grand Slam. Or, to put it another way, Trevor Immelman
is one win closer to a sweep of the major championships
than Woods.
That,
however, entirely misses several points. The first being
what took place this past weekend at Augusta National
Golf Club; the second being the remarkable death-grip
Woods holds on his sport—even in defeat.
 Woods is
so good so often that it is easy to forget that he is
(occasionally) fallible, that there will be weeks when
he can’t put the ball in the fairway consistently and
his putting will be merely good as opposed to
spectacular.
The sad
thing about that is there is a tendency not to credit
those who beat him (it hasn’t been a long list lately),
but rather to talk about what Woods didn’t do well.
Immelman is an extremely worthy champion, a rising young
player with a superb golf swing who fought off the
nerves anyone is going to have trying to win his first
major, while being chased by Woods, to make several
clutch putts on the back nine—most notably the 20-footer
from off the green at the 11th that allowed him to have
enough cushion to handle a splash-down double bogey at
the 16th.
Immelman
is 28, which means he’s the only player in the world
under 30 currently holding a major title. He’s the first
South African to win the Masters since Gary Player won
his third in 1978. There’s a sweet symmetry to his
relationship with Player, not only because Player has
been a mentor to him but because Player set the all-time
record by teeing it up in his 51st Masters while
Immelman was winning his first. Add in Immelman coming
back four months after surgery to remove a tumor from
his diaphragm and you have a wonderful story.
Except
(and this really isn’t anyone’s fault) all the questions
aren’t about Immelman leading from wire-to-wire but
about Woods not winning. That’s just the way it is in
golf these days. Years ago, when Arnold Palmer was
trying to win one last time near the end of his career,
he was caught from behind at the Hawaiian Open by a pro
named Gary Groh. The lead on the wire story that day
was, “Arnie lost again.” Groh was mentioned somewhere in
the third paragraph.
Groh, a
genuinely nice man, laughed when he was asked about
Palmer’s loss being the story rather than his victory.
“I’d have written it the same way,” he said. “The check
I got for winning was probably double what it would have
been if not for Arnold Palmer.”
Today’s
players know the same is true of Woods. Immelman’s check
for $1.35 million—not to mention how much the win will
be worth to him away from the golf course—is markedly
higher because of the visibility Woods has brought to
the game. Immelman gushed about Woods, justifiably proud
of himself for hanging on to beat him.
Of
course Woods, and others, won’t see it quite that way.
They will accurately point out that Woods drove the ball
all over the lot for most of the week and missed several
key putts, especially on Sunday. They will conveniently
forget that he is the greatest scrambler in the history
of golf and keeps himself in tournaments when he doesn’t
bring his “A” game to the tee by making pars no one on
earth would even think about trying to make. And, while
Woods will wave his hand in disgust when a 20-footer
goes in for birdie at the 18th on Sunday as if he has
never made a putt in his life, they will forget the
50-footer he made at the 11th for birdie and the
up-and-downs he converted all week. Sure, he missed a
five-footer for birdie at the 13th but how did he get to
that five-footer? Drive in the trees, punch out,
gorgeous wedge to five feet. Ho-hum. Other guys would
have had a five-footer for six; his was for four.
What
makes it so difficult to put the wooden stake through
Woods’s heart, even in weeks when his game isn’t all
there, is that he’s so competitive—he can will himself
to stay in contention with extraordinary recovery shots
and the occasional ho-hum 50-footer. That, and the fact
that anytime he’s trailing on the leader board everyone
ahead of him develops a crick in their neck looking back
to see where he is. Call it a Tiger tick. They’ve all
got it.
Immelman
played the “don’t look at the scoreboard,” game on
Sunday and, since he won, there’s no arguing with it.
Generally speaking, though, it is absolutely stupid to
not know what’s going on around you on Sunday. Not
looking didn’t seem to calm him very much and what if
his lead had been one or he’d been tied playing 18?
Don’t you need to know that? Imagine playing any other
sport without knowing the score. The two greatest
players in the history of the game, Woods and Nicklaus,
never once walked by a scoreboard without checking it.
Woods
began the year by saying on his web site that he thought
a calendar Grand Slam was “easily attainable,” this
year. He did that, no doubt, to try to reach a mindset
where he believed it could happen and would happen.
As great
as Woods is, the odds against such a feat are daunting.
The fact that he won four majors in a row back in
2000-01 is an amazing feat and is proof that he is
capable of winning four straight.
But so
much has to go right for such a thing to happen. You
can’t have one truly bad round like the 81 Woods shot in
a hurricane at the 2002 British Open when he had already
won the Masters and US Open that year and was a couple
of shots back after two rounds at Muirfield.
You
can’t have another great player like Lee Trevino have a
near-perfect week the way Jack Nicklaus did in 1972
after he had won the first two majors of that year.
And you
can’t have a wayward driver and a less-than-perfect
putter, even if you do enough other things well enough
to finish second to a good young player having the week
of his life.
One can
only hope that Woods was joking when he said after his
loss, “I learned my lesson with you guys,” when
discussing the comment he had made, unsolicited, on his
own web site. Woods is so careful about everything he
says in public that it would be a shame if one slightly
wayward prediction (he didn’t say he would win the Slam
just that he could) caused him to retreat back into some
kind of shell.
There
are some, many, in fact, in the media who think that a
major isn’t really a major when the winner is Immelman
or Zach Johnson or Angel Cabrera. If Woods can’t win for
some reason, then Phil Mickelson should win, or Ernie
Els, or Vijay Singh, or maybe one of the young guns like
Adam Scott, or a bomber like Bubba Watson. One national
radio talk-show host was heard on this morning saying,
“Enough with Zach Johnson and Trevor Immelman, we need a
real Masters winner next year.”
Which
misses the point entirely. Immelman is a
more-than-worthy winner and a terrific story, too. He’s
good enough to contend in majors down the road. A
victory like his should be both appreciated and enjoyed.
There
will be plenty more majors where Woods ends up with the
trophy or the green jacket. He will blow away fields
again—quite possibly in the US Open at Torrey Pines in
June—on plenty of occasions, leaving us all gasping at
his talent. That’s almost the norm in golf these days:
Tiger laps field; sun rises in east.
That’s
why a Sunday like the one just past should be savored
because it isn’t the norm. The unexpected is what makes
sports worth our time. Trevor Immelman was an unexpected
winner.
And a
worthy one at that. Woods will survive a few missed
putts and another year without a jacket to add to his
collection.
So will
golf, believe it or not. |
