It's Tiger, Tiger burning bright after victory at Augusta Masters

Through an extremely crowded bunch of possibles, Tiger wins through

This is a difficult one to write, for me. For so many years, friends and others have derided me for holding forth that despite all difficulties, physical and psychological (if any), Tiger’s absolute strength of mind and determination to be the best ever, would override those concerns. Some of the comments bordered on considering me insane; others said he was a dead man walking; still others asked to be struck off my mailing list because  they felt that my articles were too Tiger centric; several others just laughed and walked away, and Vivek Bhandari was kind enough to say that my persistence at saying that Tiger will come back to the winners circle has been justified when he won the Tour Championship in spectacular fashion. Today, I’ve already received a flood of mail on the subject!

 It was a dreich day, as the Scots would say. Cloudy, somewhat gloomy, strong breezes blowing without a care of how champion golfer’s are contending for a fabled Green Jacket (colour: Brilliant Rye Green: Pantone 342). Worse weather was predicted which caused the pretty rule bound Augusta National to break with  normal protocol and instead of flights of two according to rank taking off from the first  tee, they had players teeing off from the first and the tenth in flights of three , and that too starting at the rather early hour of 7:30 am. This was to try to ensure that all play finished before the bad weather hit. Furthermore, the publicly held Green Jacket ceremony was aborted as many patrons would stay and watch and this could have been dangerous for the had there been the predicted  thunder, lightning and rain ( that’s the kind of weather that three elderly , rather haggard and unkempt ladies like to meet in to prepare some insidious plot !).

This meant that players had to get up in the wee hours to do their weight lifting and exercises and then practice to set their swings; Tiger with his four back surgeries and four knee operations has to do some special extra exercises so, despite his later start he might have risen early, I would imagine.

While the fairways and greens were lush, lovely and green, for the patrons the going was sometimes a little rough as huge amounts of green coloured sand had been spread around to ameliorate very muddy and slushy conditions.  This phenomenon repeats itself annually, when it rains, which suggests that there is no solution except to alter the fairways and that is clearly not going to happen.

  Most people want Tiger to win because Tiger is Tiger.  However, even in America Molinari is a popular figure, I think mainly on account of his simplicity and humility, despite the fact that he bested Tiger at The Open and was a significant contributor to the thrashing the US  received from European in the recent Ryder Cup, having won all five of his matches.

 While the scores in front of the final threesome of the leader Molinari at -13 and Tony Finau and Tiger  at -11 kept going up and down, nothing changed between the leading threesome until Tiger  birdied to narrow the gap to one and now the viewing world was waiting for an attack!  Disappointingly however, Tiger not only gave that one shot back but also another thereby increasing the gap to three with only eight more holes to play. In the meantime, Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka, Ian Poulter, Schauffele, Rickie Fowler, Patrick Cantlay, Jason Day, Webb Simpson, John Rahm, all great and powerful players were pushing up against the leaders and also waiting for one or two or all to fall.

The fall happened at Golden Bell, the twelfth hole which is famous for changing the fortunes of the game.  It is at the cusp of Amen Corner, aptly named because this is the place for many a requiem. It is also sometimes known as  Jezebel, after the beautiful enchantress with loose morals and a cheating heart who causes all aspirants to her favours to suffer.  Finau and Molinari both struck their shots into Rae’s Creek and earned a double each while Tiger was already on the dance floor.  This caused a two shot swing and after that the momentum changed decisively and irretrievably in Tiger’s favour and away from the other two in the threesome. Thereafter, birdies at 13, 15 and 16, with a narrowly missed one on 17 gave him a two shot cushion standing on the 18th tee.

As the cameras panned in on him one could discern a subtle smirk but he knew the work was not yet done. That he stood at this position despite having only taken advantage of 50% of the par 5s when each of them is quite birdieable, and having bogeyed the 5th on all four days, is a real tribute to his skill around this course. He knows every edge and corner and trouble spot, indeed having visited some of them in the past, and none can beat his domain knowledge. 

As he watched Brooks Koepka putt for birdie on the 18th in front of him he must have willed that it slide by on the lower side, which it dutifully did. Now his two stroke cushion was confirmed and he carefully and conservatively drew his three wood to try to split the fairway and not risk a disaster with his errant driver. He  hit it just fine and had a clear shot to the green and then....he sort of flubbed it! If he now doubled from there, he would be in a 4 way playoff with Koepka, Dustin Johnson and Schauffele...and they would not have let him get away with it. He just played safely to 15 feet and two putted for a bogey to win by one.

The roars were so thunderous, not least the Tiger’s own roars, that they rent the overcast skies and let in some rays of sunshine to actually allow a presentation ceremony. 

Tiger was obviously beaming from ear to ear as he walked up the gallery to fill out his card, he greeted his family who never lost confidence in him especially his demanding mother Kultida, and a bit further to be embraced and congratulated by his peers and competitors whose respect for him must have grown multifold.

So, those three haggard ladies concocted the plan that, possibly unexpectedly, allowed Tiger to forge ahead. This denouement in Masters history will be second to none as it is the homecoming of Tiger to where he belongs.

Next: A brief retrospective and prospective