Trevor Immelman, a worthy champion

Tiger Woods fails to make a charge, finishes sole second.

The only thing missing from a scenario where Tiger wins the Championship was Tiger shooting a low score, say, a 68 like Jiminez scored. He was one of the five who played level today and there were only four scores under par.

The rest of the script played out as predicted; Flesch dropped six shots to par, Casey seven, Snedeker five and even the eventual champion, Trevor Immelman, dropped three.

Unfortunately for Tiger, despite striking the ball well, he could not putt to save his life (win the championship!). He failed to make birdies on any of the par five holes and missed a number of short putts besides. Surely, if he had scored better, playing ahead of Trevor, he would have brought enormous pressure on the eventual champion. So, Tiger can not blame anyone else but himself.

One likes to think, however, that Trevor would have withstood any serious challenge. This would have resulted in a terrific contest. As it was, only if Immelman pulled a Van de Velde on the final hole (three shot lead) would he open the door to let Tiger in.

The final shot to the green on the eighteenth, from a deep divot may have behaved differently if he was leading only by one. Any way, these are only conjectures and we have a very worthy champion.

Because of his recent brush with serious illness, it seems that he was able to dig really deep for courage, virtually on every shot. Did it not look as though he were in prayer as he settled his mind down before each shot? Also, as emerged from his post win interview, his family life is extremely positive and supportive; furthermore the fantastic hands on support he has received from triple Masters champion, Gary Player, who won his last title before Immelman was born, must have been a great morale booster. Incidentally for the Junior Trainees, Immelman started playing when he was five!

It will also be instructive to note that, in this century, Ernie Els, Retief Goosens, Tim Clark and Rory Sabbatini (all South Africans) have placed second in one year or another, and of course Trevor Immelman is the first South African to win this event.

This will give a big boost to the game in South and Southern Africa. All this development of talent may have started when South Africa subscribed to the British PGA's professional teaching programme. Administrators of this sport in India should kindly take note.

Much will be written on the Masters in the next few days and so it might be interesting to talk a little of the complexities of the game.

Did you know that an elephant has six hundred muscles in its proboscis (nose/trunk) each of which he can selectively manipulate with the greatest dexterity and delicacy to pick up something as small as a blade of grass to uprooting trees, or doing specialised human-directed heavy work.

This requires perfect coordination between the mental, physical, emotional and character functions without which the simplest jobs would be botched.

So, how strong is a blade of grass? Ask Trevor Immelman, the overnight leader at 11 under. As his third shot to fifteen (Firethorn) spun back from an otherwise safe landing on the green, and inevitably headed for the creek, which would have cost him possibly two shots and test his temperament to the extreme for the next three holes, it came to rest against a solitary blade of grass; that, and the power of Immelman's fervent prayer, allowed the ball to hang just above the water.

He dared not approach the ball but gingerly, and could not ground his club lest the tremor of that, or the gusting wind, or his weight shift, would cause the blade of grass to shift, resulting in disaster. Whew! ...escaped with a par and soaring confidence.

At the championship level, golf is no different than the elephant's proboscis, as it requires the coordination of every muscle in the body for virtually every shot, no matter whether it is a strong or a delicate one, and those muscles surely get affected by one's mental, emotional and physical states, and the character ability to handle the adversity of competitive stress.

The final day had started cold with temperatures at 55 degrees F and a Westerly wind at 20 mph, with occasional gusts. The opening scores were indifferent to weak, possibly anticipating the difficulties for the likely main contestants ahead. They all knew that, in the past, five players have made up six shots or more on the final day (the most famous of them being Nick Faldo overhauling Greg Norman to win the 1996 Masters); they all knew that only Tiger has won the Masters among those within eight shots off the present lead; the leaders were sweating nervously, knowing that they have never been in this position before and would have heard Tiger saying: "You can shoot yourself right out of it, or you can put yourself right back in it".

And so, to put themselves "right back in it", they were practiced with their swing coaches jealously in attendance applying band-aids to invisible problems. To see Tiger vary the length, height and speed in minute increments, playing the same shot in different ways, was a lesson in how to practice.

All the leaders appeared just as competent in practice. On the longer shots one could see the ball get caught up in the gusting wind and drift away from its intended flight paths.

With this preparation did the last few pairings go into battle, seeing already that the conditions were decimating those who started earlier. The next five hours were brutally stressful, as already reported earlier, but in the end they did indeed throw up a worthy and a role model of a champion, of whom we will hear and see much for at least another decade.