Let’s face it. The coming of spring means so much more than pitching reports and playoff runs. It means that magical tournament in with the green jackets and blue azaleas is only a nine-iron away.
So in this week’s Five for [Five], we start the clock and detail the stories to watch over the next four weeks as the pros gear up for the 76th Masters at Augusta National:
1) What will be the state of Tiger Woods’s game?
The man who was once the surest thing in sports is now golf’s biggest enigma. And that’s being generous, considering Woods’s performance has declined steadily since his T-4th Masters finish in his return last year. Since then, he’s recorded his worst four-round total as a pro, failed to qualify for the Tour Championship and the Ryder Cup for the first time in his career, blown a three-shot final round lead for the first time, and changed swing coaches (again). Formerly No.1 for 281 weeks, he’s fallen to 5th in the world rankings. More poignantly, he’s become almost an afterthought on weekend golf coverage. I turned on the Dubai Classic a couple Sundays ago and watched a good forty minutes before I saw Tiger.There was a time not long ago when Woods could be seven back with seven to play and the television would squawk about his penchant for a comeback, glued to the man in red.
There are certainly plausible explanations for Woods’s decline: a twice-surgically repaired knee, combined 13-month layoff in the last two-plus seasons, and Pineurst-sized personal distractions head the list. It’s hard to believe the guy could even break 80, much less win on Tour. Yet most still believe Tiger will win big again, including Nicklaus. But what will it take? One win? Tiger will play this week at Doral and in two weeks at Bay Hill, courses where he’s won a combined nine times.
But he’s won everywhere. If ever there’s a tournament that will turn the Tiger, it’s the Masters, where Woods sports four green jackets and still retains that mystique that seems to have escaped him everywhere else. After all, Woods returned at Augusta last year after a four-month stint as America’s punching bag and finished T-4th. But now Woods isn’t just dealing with a marital and personal life crisis: he’s battling the worst golfing stretch of his career. You can bet which is more maddening to Tiger, but it looks like one is growing as difficult to resolve as the other.
2) Will defending champion Phil Mickelson enter as the favorite?
Mickelson’s weekend heroics at last year’s Masters rank among golf’s all-time great performances. His consecutive eagles on the back-nine on Saturday, coupled with his off-the-pinestraw, between-the-trees six iron on 13 on Sunday were pure Lefty legend. The win gave Mickelson his third green jacket. This season, he’s had two Top 10’s in five starts, including a 2nd place finish at his season-opening Farmers Insurance in January.
But he hasn’t won since last year’s Masters, and only two players (Woods and Nick Faldo) have repeated at Augusta since 1990. Still, with Woods’s game ranging from suspect to shambles, and none of the young guns save perhaps Kaymer having separated themselves from the pack, it’s hard to imagine a higher Vegas starter than Lefty. And with 37 career Tour wins and more Augusta triumphs than anyone save Nicklaus, Palmer and Woods, it’s not any harder to imagine Mickelson donning the green jacket again this April. The most pressing question is probably who will be there to duel with him on Sunday.
3) Which young gun will be ready to fire?
Last year’s Tour season saw eleven players in their 20’s combine for 14 wins, including two of the four major championships (Louis Oosthuizen and Martin Kaymer). Of the heralded group, Kaymer made the biggest move. The Germanator finished in the Top 10 in three of the four majors, claimed his first major championship in the PGA at Whistling Straits, and won European Tour Player of the Year along with U.S. Open winner Graeme McDowell, only 31. But most believe the youngster with the game to flourish at Augusta is Northern Ireland’s Rory McIlroy, who finished T-20th in his first and only Masters appearance in 2009–at the ripe age of 19.
Now a seasoned 21 years, McIlroy already boasts a major championship pedigree: a T-10th at the 2009 U.S. Open (his first), a T-3 in last year’s British, and T-3 in consecutive PGA Championships. He broke through last season for his first career Tour win with a final round 62 at Quail Hollow. The electric round set a new course record and made him only the 2nd player in history to win a Tour event prior to turning 21. (The other is some guy named Eldrick.) It exhibited in full force McIlroy’s rare combination of power, touch, grit, and flair that’s led Gary Player to tout him as golf’s “most exciting player.” It’s the same combination that makes McIlroy suited to star at Augusta, a 7,435 yd. Alister MacKenzie design where aggressive play and pure shot-making ability is so uniquely rewarded.
4) Is there an aging wonder poised for one more Augusta run?
An old favorite conjuring the roars once more remains a staple of every magical Augusta weekend. Last year fifty year-old Fred Couples, traipsing around in Skechers because of chronic back pains, took the lead in Round One and stayed in contention until the shadows — and Couples’s old age — caught up to him on Sunday. In the 2009 Masters, 48 year-old Kenny Perry schooled the field all week long before losing in a playoff to Angel Cabrera. And 46 year-old Jack Nicklaus’s charging triumph in 1986 — a back-nine 30 for his 6th green jacket, after six years of not winning a single major — is golf’s greatest Sunday ever. None of the current old guard carries near the Augusta pedigree of the Bear, but 2000 Masters champion Vijay Singh, 48, is playing some very good golf. The Big Fijian is 10th on the money list ($1,179,492) with two Top 5’s in six starts. From 2002 – 2008, Singh had six consecutive Top 10 finishes at the Masters. He knows how to play the course; if he’s the old guy to catch the Augusta lightning, watch out. Others to watch: Tom Lehman, Bernhard Langer, and Mark O’Meara. All three are former major champions on the softer side of 50, currently playing very well on the Champions Tour. Lehman and Langher have won this year already, and O’Meara has two Top 10’s in two starts. It’s a formula that’s worked well for Couples and Tom Watson in the past, and it makes sense: the difference in pysche of a 48 year-old pro getting overwhelmed on the PGA Tour, and a 52 year-old pro making big bucks and putts every Sunday on the Champions Tour has to be huge. It may mean a difference of four years against life’s clock, but it’s damn sure happier golf.
5) How important are the next four PGA Tour events to the Masters landscape?
Four of the last ten Masters winners won at least once in the four weeks prior to August. But the two guys who did it, Mickelson (2006) and Woods (2005, ’02, ’01), have seven green jackets and 109 career wins combined. It’s not exactly a random sample. Last season’s lead-up to the Masters provides a better example: Ernie Els won the WGC-Cadillac and the Bay Hill two weeks later, and came into Augusta as the trendy favorite to make a run. After solid play to open the tournament, the Big Easy shot a gruesome 75 on Saturday and went into the final round 15 shots behind the leaders. Els (no wins in 16 Masters apperances) was so discouraged afterwards he told reporters of the Augusta experience, “‘I’m killing myself and I don’t want to do it anymore.” But Els’s was a case study. Augusta National presents such a unique test that playing well coming in doesn’t assure you’ll be in contention come the weekend– or even around. As Els put it, “Somewhere down the line, something is going to happen that’s not good…it’s one of those tournaments. What can you do? It’s done it to a bunch of people, and I’m probably one of them. I mean, go down the list — Weiskopf, Norman, Miller and many, many others.”
Els spoke of Augusta National as though it were a living, breathing force. Which, of course, it is. That’s the magic of Augusta. Who will be able to wield it on Sunday — and who will succumb instead — is why we’re all waiting to watch.
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