AUGUSTA, Ga. — Before Tiger Woods had won even one Masters, Jack Nicklaus was predicting he’d win 10. They just seemed made for each other, the big hitter’s course with the lightning greens and the length-to-spare prodigy with the deft putting touch. At Augusta National, Nicklaus figured, there was no limit to what Woods could accomplish.
And Jack certainly looked clairvoyant when Tiger ran off with his first Masters as a pro, lapping the field by a dozen strokes and finishing 18 under to break the Golden Bear’s tournament record. As Woods prepares to tee it up in another Masters tomorrow, though, the goal Nicklaus set for him appears less reachable than it once did — perhaps even less reachable than a Grand Slam.
Make no mistake, Eldrick is still the same dominating player, voracious for victory. It’s Augusta that isn’t the same. Thanks to tweaking designed to protect par, it’s longer, its bunkers are less avoidable by the power players and its once wide-open fairways are now fringed with a short rough. Not U.S. Open rough, mind you, but bothersome nonetheless.
Tiger still plays the course better than anybody; he has four green jackets in his closet and has tied for third and for second the past two years. But the place has stopped feeling like His Own Backyard. Last April, Zach Johnson, 161st on the PGA Tour in driving distance, won here, for goodness sakes.
Asked about Nicklaus’ famous prognostication yesterday, Woods smiled and said, “He was a little out there by saying that. I hadn’t even made a cut yet. But you know, I just think that the way the course was set up then, versus the way it’s set up now, guys with power just had a huge advantage. I remember playing No. 2 [a 575-yard par 5] my first year. The longest club I hit in there was a 4-iron. When I won in ’97, I hit two wedges into 15 [another par 5].”
This week, with the course still a little soft, Tiger has seen players hitting woods into the par-4 18th. Gone are the days when 68 — not 72 — was par, in his book, for long hitters like him. Tee shots, in particular, are “a lot more penal,” he said, “but the greens are still just as penal.”
No one, of course, is paying any attention to him. The oddsmakers have made Woods even money to win Masters No. 5, and observers like Nick Faldo are suggesting it could well be the start of a single-year Slam (as opposed to the backdoor Tiger Slam he pulled off in 2000-01).
“I said it right at the beginning of the year,” said Faldo. “I think the first three courses [Augusta, Torrey Pines for the U.S. Open and Birkdale for the British] are right up his street. If he can do the first three, the last one [the PGA at Oakland Hills] will all be mental. And would anybody bet against him in that situation?”
Perhaps not. But contrary to popular belief, there are quite a few courses Woods has played better than Augusta National. Consider: Since turning pro, Tiger has won the Masters four times in 11 tries, a 36.4 percent success rate. But at both Firestone (site of one of the World Golf Championships) and Torrey Pines (Buick Invitational), he’s 6-for-11 (54.5 percent). At Bay Hill (Arnold Palmer Invitational), meanwhile, he’s 5-for-12 (41.7 percent), and at Cog Hill (BMW Championship) he’s 4-for-10 (40 percent).
And let’s not forget two other venues Woods has Totally Owned despite visiting infrequently: St. Andrews (two British Opens) and Medinah (two PGAs). He’s unbeaten on both courses. So Tiger being even money at Augusta this week sounds a bit extreme, about as extreme as Nicklaus’ 10-green jackets prophecy. This year’s Open at Torrey Pines is another matter, though. The odds on him in that one should be 1-to-100 — Man O’ War odds.
You can hardly blame the members here for wanting to keep Grand Old Augusta from getting steamrolled by technology. But the end result of the latest redesign is that the course is no longer as Tiger-friendly. Last year, try as he might, he couldn’t break par in any of the four rounds — this in the midst of another fabulous season, one that saw him win his 13th major and six other events.
Which doesn’t mean he’s lost his feel for the place, couldn’t walk it blindfolded if he wanted to. This is, after all, his 14th Masters (counting his amateur days), and “experience definitely helps,” he said. “But also, you have to keep evolving, because the golf course keeps changing. They keep changing the greens on you, the fairways, the tee angles. … There’s subtle little changes, and obviously you have to mark that down and put it in your memory bank.”
Augusta National is still Tiger Woods’ kind of course. He just doesn’t have a deed to the property any more.
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