Practice and (Im)Perfect

SPORTS Tiger Woods is hungry to win all the four Majors this year. Tiger Woods has not won the Masters for two years in a row and now he is really hungry for not only winning this week but also winning all the four Majors in the same year.

He already owns the Tiger Slam when he simultaneously held all the four titles, but that does not count for the record books. Furthermore, when he wins this year (not if!) he will have won his fifth Masters title (he already holds four and not three as was erroneously reported yesterday) and will wish to catch up to Jack Nicklaus' six and then quickly overtake him, thus becoming, arguably and indisputably, the best player ever.

There is a clear change in his publicly-stated attitude to being the greatest. In an interview at practice on April 8, he averred with a steely determination in his eyes that he felt it was possible to win the grand slam this year.

He is chafing at not having won the WCG-CA Championship and his concentration and focus has become even sharper and pinpointed.

It is now statistically calculated that Tiger is not the "best" in all categories of the game (for example, he was 152nd in driving accuracy; Coceres was 1st but 131 in rankings etc).

He has concluded that as long as he does not drive out of bounds, his length off the tees, while not the longest, is sufficient to put him as number one in greens in regulation, number one in putting and number two in scrambling, all of which together place him far ahead of the entire field in the predictivity of scoring and performance.

Now he has apparently decided that he will not get into so much trouble on his drives. This means that he will grow even more space between him and the rest of the field. (Analysis by Mark Sweeney).

The Tiger is hungry; he will eat the four Majors this year.

He is doing so by sacrificing a few yards off the tee (for improving driving accuracy) because on his second shots from 150 yards in, his percentage of hitting the greens is so much higher than anyone else's, and from further than this it's even higher, that he fully expects this tactic to win.

His experience, mental toughness, and pre-game analysis and plan put him as a sure winner.

Tiger is paired with Angel Cabrera and Stuart Appleby for the first two rounds and that will also help as the playing partners are tough competitors, which will enhance Tiger's competitive sprit.

There are 19 first timers at the tournament and most of them are simply in awe of the Masters and its aura. Another lot are aged past winners with no chance of coming close to a win (no, do not compare with Nicklaus who won the 1986 Masters at age 46, as the game has completely changed since then with the advent of technology and the realisation that one also has to be very strong physically).

It's really interesting to see the contenders practice, doing the final honing of their capabilities just prior to this unequal contest. So many have swings that can be called imperfect, even though when they enter the hitting zone they are in pretty good position; however, any slight additional deviation will cause the result to be unattractive; one can see the faults even on a TV telecast.

Daniel Chopra is being touted as a dark horse to possibly win this year. Can he? He lacks experience at this venue. (By the way, Daniel was the first winner of the Honda-Siel PGA championship of India, which does not figure in his bio-data because the Indian circuit still does not figure in the great tours of the world!)

Of course, all the aspirants will wish to disprove the analysis that Tiger will win all majors this year. This will make the bookies very happy.

The Masters Tournament begins on April 10 and the tension of expectation in the air can be cut with a knife. Let's wait and see.