This year the champion will be under even closer scrutiny.
The first of Tiger Woods’ 14 Majors came at the 1997 Masters when the precocious 21-year-old strutted the hallowed fairways of the Augusta National Golf Club and proceeded to smash the record books with a 12-stroke victory margin over fellow American, Tom Kite. He became the youngest ever winner of the Masters.
Since 1997, every preview of every Masters could begin with “It’s difficult to look past Tiger Woods…” This year that line is even more pertinent because everyone will be looking at Tiger more than looking for him. The Augusta patrons will not know what to expect. None of us knows what to expect. Woods barely smiles when it comes to golf, because for him it is a serious business. What has been blown apart is his aura of detachability, which separates him from everyone else.
Sure, he stands aloft as the world number one. But five months of salacious revelations have made him — in the public eye — vulnerable. The acid test for Woods will be how he feels when he stands at that first tee. He will have prepared for the moment in ways that no other man at Augusta could. The scrutiny will be intense. He knows it. How does he deal with it? His golfing brain has to take over. Golf is his salvation. Never mind about getting his career back on track, it is his decision that Augusta will be where he starts to get his life back on track. We don’t yet know which players will be partnered with Woods for his first two rounds. They will need the ability to withstand even greater attention than Woods normally gets.
Two Americans have already said they would relish playing with him. Defending British Open champion, Stewart Cink, is one. He has been paired with Tiger in six rounds at the Masters, including the first two rounds last year. The other is Tiger’s great rival — and they don’t exactly send each other Christmas cards — Phil Mickelson.
I was one of the 55,000 or so at Augusta last year who will never forget the noise when Woods and Mickelson had their own duel in the sun, when they systematically tore the front nine holes apart.
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It’s a headache for the Masters committee.
I cannot see them putting Mickelson with Woods, but I can see them thinking of two other Americans — Mark O’Meara, the 1998 Masters winner and a great mentor in Woods’ life, and Fred Couples, the 1992 Masters winner. It is a big field this year, so the flights are three-balls not pairs, and with O’Meara, 53 and Couples, 51, Woods would have two guys who have seen their fair share of life.
What you’re not going to see is Woods playing alongside the two in-form South Africans, Ernie Els and Retief Goosen. Ernie goes into the Masters in the best form of his life with back-to-back USPGA Tour victories, and this is the Major he wants most. Ernie’s game is perfectly set up for Augusta. Goosen also missed the cut last year but in the last eight Masters he has been runner-up twice. He is also playing beautifully this year.
Augusta is like no other place on earth. It has a folklore of its own. Even if Woods does not script a surreal story by winning a fifth Masters title, it could prove to be the starting point for his redemption. He might settle for that alone.
ALAN WILKINS is a TV broadcaster for ESPN Star Sports. His column Inside Edge appears on this page every alternate Sunday