Tiger makes stunning turnaround
By Rich Hofmann
Knight-Ridder Newspapers
(KRT)
AUGUSTA, Ga. - Minding your own business, back to the 8th tee,
ambling along, enjoying the sunshine, waiting for Tiger Woods
to hit, completely without a care.
At which point the shouting began.
"Fore left," the marshal yelled. "Fore left."
The ball whizzed over suddenly-ducking heads, dozens of heads,
dozens of the thousands of heads that were following Woods and
defending champion Nick Faldo around 18 holes in the opening round
of the 61st Masters, snaking around Augusta National Golf Club
like a giant anaconda, coiling, uncoiling, resting, moving again.
It was to be a remarkable day for Tiger - 40 on the front nine
followed by 30 on the back, buckshot sprayed everywhere in the
first half followed by lethal poison darts in the second. He came
within a shot of the course record on the back nine, within about
an inch on the 18th green of shooting a 40-29, a score that ought
to be impossible in a sport that doesn't allow for the two-point
conversion.
Most guys shoot 40 on the front and figure, well, let's just
try not to do anything especially embarrassing the rest of the
day. But Woods is different, you might have noticed. He responded
by firing the kind of round that lives on in history - four bogeys
and no birdies on the front, four birdies and an eagle on the
back. At 2-under par, he sits in fourth place after the first
round - great position.
And as he would say afterward, "I hit so many bad shots,
it's nice to find something within yourself, to dig down deep
and pull it out."
By the end, the crowd following Woods and Faldo was gargantuan.
It ebbed midway through the round as both players faltered, but
then the word obviously began to spread, the word of Tiger's revival.
By the 16th hole, thousands of people again were trudging along
and craning their necks and high-fiving and shaking their heads
in wonder.
First, though, there was the buckshot faze.
------
He'd already missed the fairways on Nos. 1 and 2, missed the
green on the par-3 3rd, and missed the fairway on No. 4. Now here
we were on the par-5 8th. His ball was 20 yards wide of the fairway
and about 8 inches from an asphalt cart path. At least a half-dozen
trees blocked his path to the fairway, including this short and
bushy thing just a couple of yards in front of him.
Short and bushy?
"It's either a white ash or a granny graybeard,"
said a woman standing nearby. Tiger's galleries are nothing if
not helpful. And huge. Make it hugely helpful, then. And hundreds
of them closed in on the ball, a little white pearl lying there
on a bed of rich, black earth and fallen brown pine needles.
"Nobody touch it," bellowed one of the marshals in
yellow hard hats who descended on the spot like a SWAT team and
immediately began attempting to clear an opening.
Tiger arrived and began studying. It isn't often that you can
get this close to a professional athlete in crisis, which Woods
clearly was. His first Masters as a pro - on a particularly-stingy
day on this historic acreage - was starting out terribly. And
among the huge crowds following him, there was an obvious percentage
of people who enjoyed Woods's predicament, who saw him as some
kind of whippersnapper who needed to be put in his place by this
majestic set of golf holes, this place that is treated almost
as a living person by some.
Or, as one middle-aged guy told his buddy along the 5th fairway,
"Tiger said this was just another golf course. Well, now
look. Augusta National is bringing him to his (ital) knees."
(end ital)
Woods didn't hear those words, and didn't need to hear them.
He had his own troubles there on No. 8, there in the trees. He
folded his arms, took some stances, crouched down and surveyed.
Not only was he going to have to stand on the cart path, but because
the path had a raised ridge on its edge, his front foot wasn't
going to be planted on level ground. And the options before him
were all low-percentage plays.
"Could you all please move back a little?" Woods
asked, evenly. And as the yellow-hats did their marshaling, Tiger
took time to study some more - taking one club, putting it back,
taking another, the only persistent sound coming from his spikes
skittering along on the asphalt.
He ended up with a 6-iron.
"I just saw a little gap," he said.
And he hit it. And he got it through the jungle, through and
onto the fairway. And he pumped his fist, just once.
He would end up bogeying the hole.
It didn't matter.
-----
The turnaround was stunning, and the eagle on the 15th was
typical of the guts and good fortune that followed Woods on the
back nine.
Good fortune? Yes. A friendly ricochet saved a wide tee shot
on the 11th. On the 15th, he yanked his drive way to the right,
way into the crowd again. This time, it somehow appeared to miss
everyone, hitting the hill just right and rolling through the
scampering hundreds and back to the fairway. He then hit your
basic 151-yard wedge shot to within 4 feet of the hole. And from
there he holed the putt for an eagle.
Standing on a hill, surveying that scene, here's what happened:
Woods eagled, the crowd whooped, and about 30 percent of them
immediately turned away and began hurrying toward the 16th tee.
Someone would have to tell them later about Faldo's birdie putt
that followed.
It was madness from then on. The crowd entirely encircled the
170-yard 16th hole, 10 deep in places. By the time Woods got to
the 18th, it seemed as if three-quarters of the gallery had gathered.
It really is a great show.
He draws people because he's young, because he's black, because
he hits the ball so far; Tiger routinely outdrove Faldo by 50
yards Thursday. And whether he was chipping in for a birdie from
the fringe on the 12th or just blasting away from the tee, the
snapshots are most definitely worth saving.
Me? The one I'd keep would be that picture at No. 8, back there
behind the trees, back there by the cart path. And it isn't even
the picture of Woods hitting the ball that was memorable.
It was this picture: Spectators gathered on the spot seconds
and minutes later, pointing with their fingers this way and that,
discussing, disagreeing, confounded, dumbfounded, trying to figure
out exactly how Tiger Woods managed to get that ball through the
trees.
(c) 1997, Philadelphia Daily News.
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