Faldo/Norman (27 page)

It had been a golden decade for the Masters. From Jack Nicklaus winning the 50th edition at the age of 46 with his spectacular blast-from-the-past charge in 1986 through to Ben Crenshaw putting everyone through the emotional wringer with his victory for the recently deceased Harvey Penick in 1995. And the final round of the 60th Masters was proving one of the most incredible ever seen. But it was to be the end of an era. The next edition of the tournament, in 1997, would prove to be one of the most significant moments in the history of golf: the start of the age of Tiger Woods.

Woods played six rounds as an amateur in the Masters, finishing 41st in 1995 and missing the cut in 1996. After finishing his second year at Stanford, Woods made the cut at the US Open at Oakland Hills, finished 22nd at the Open Championship at Royal Lytham, where he won the silver medal as the leading amateur, claimed his third successive US Amateur Championship – not even Bobby Jones had done that – and then turned professional. ‘Hello, world,’ he said at the great unveiling, with a cheque for $40 million from Nike in his back pocket.

When Woods won on his fifth appearance as a pro, at the Las Vegas Invitational in a playoff over Davis Love, he qualified for the 1997 Masters. He won again two tournaments later, claimed the PGA Tour’s Rookie of the Year, was voted
Sports Illustrated
’s Sportsman of the Year and featured liberally in the end-of-year musings in the golf magazines. Tiger was all the golf world was talking about, which must have been a blessing to Norman.

He began 1997 by winning the Mercedes Championship, the old Tournament of Champions which starts the year, for his third victory in nine events as a professional. Then came Augusta, where he made his third appearance – his first since turning pro. As the US Amateur champion, Woods was paired with Faldo, the defending champion, on the first day. Already one of the favourites for
the title, there was much attention on the 21-year-old but at first his swing was out of sync.

He outdrove Faldo by 70 yards at the 1st, the only problem being he ended up in a greenside bunker for two and took a bogey. He went to the turn in 40 with four bogeys in all on the outward nine. With Faldo out in 41 and struggling as well, the massed gallery started drifting away to other groups. While the veteran Englishman could do nothing to rectify his problems, Woods seemed to flick a switch; on the 10th tee he adopted a new swing-thought which cured the faults in his action, and then started one of the best stretches of golf ever played at Augusta over the last 63 holes, making only three more bogeys for the rest of the tournament.

Now that he had his power under control, he was taking the course apart. At the 13th he hit a drive and a six-iron and two-putted for his birdie, but it was the 15th that really showed that Woods was playing a different game to everyone else. That day David Duval had a nine there and Norman had a double bogey on the way to a 77. Woods hit a monstrous drive of around 350 yards, getting a huge kick forward after landing on a downslope that few others could reach, and a second shot with only a wedge from 151 yards to four feet – eagle. ‘It was a tough day initially but I got through it,’ he said. He came home in 30, six under, for an opening 70. John Huston was leading on 67 but the story was all about Woods.

Faldo scored a 75 on the first day, eight strokes higher than his final round a year earlier, and although he was not playing with Woods on the second day, it was as if he was shell-shocked from being exposed to the ferocity of the new star’s play. He scored an 81, his highest ever round at Augusta. It included a nine at that supposed drive-wedge par-five, the 15th. He missed the cut, as did Norman. Was the latter’s collapse from 1996 still
weighing on his mind? He was asked, of course, and, just as predictably, disagreed.

Woods added a 66 on the second day, moving into a three-stroke lead over Colin Montgomerie. This time he eagled the 13th, with a three-wood and an eight-iron to 20 feet, and it was there that he took the lead for good. Montgomerie had a 67 and was asked if he could win? ‘It depends on how Mr Woods fares,’ said the Scot, fresh off his lowest score at Augusta. ‘The way he plays this course tends to suit him more than anyone else playing right now. If he decides to do what he is doing, well, more credit to him, we’ll all shake his hand and say “well done”. But at the same time, there’s more to it than hitting the ball a long way. The pressure is mounting, more and more.’

Mostly on Monty. He puffed his chest out and had a smirk when he outdrove Woods off the 1st tee – Montgomerie had used a driver, Woods a three-wood – but for the rest of the day had a face like thunder. Experience might have been on the Scot’s side, but it was no use to him and there was only one more day left before they would no longer be equal on number of major championships won. Montgomerie had a 74, Tiger a 65. Woods displayed his power at the 2nd, which was 555 yards long but downhill, when he hit a drive and a nine-iron over the green before chipping back to a foot for a birdie. He finished the round by hitting a sand wedge from 109 yards to a foot at the last. He now led by nine strokes from Costantino Rocca.

Montgomerie, 12 behind, pretty much stomped out of the recorder’s hut at the back of the 18th green, up to the clubhouse and then on to the media centre and the interview room. He had not been asked to make an appearance, no official would have dared, but he had something to say. Before anyone could ask a question, the Scot declared: ‘All I have to say is one brief comment. There is no chance – we are all human beings here – there
is no chance humanly possible that Tiger is not going to win this tournament tomorrow. No way.’

With many writers on deadline, there were not many bodies in the room, but everyone else was still listening on the internal feed piped to their desks in the main auditorium. After a brief pause, one questioner in the room mumbled: ‘What makes you say that?’

‘Have you just come in, or have you been away?’ Montgomerie asked, getting more than a little frayed at the edges by now. ‘Have you been on holiday?’ But, the questioner reasoned, everybody thought Norman was going to win the year before when he led by six strokes. ‘This is very different,’ Montgomerie opined. ‘Nick Faldo is not lying second and Tiger Woods is not Greg Norman.’

Of Woods, Montgomerie added: ‘I appreciated that he hit long and straight and I appreciated that his iron shots were very accurate. I did not appreciate how he putted.’ The final question harked back to what Montgomerie had hinted at the previous evening, whether Woods was ready to win. ‘He is’ was the emphatic reply before the Scot made a swift exit stage right.

Montgomerie scored a flustered 81 the next day, matching Faldo from Friday. Paul Azinger, who played with Woods in the second round, had a 77 the day after. Rocca, alongside Woods on the final day, never threatened the leader and scored a 75. Woods posted a fairly conservative 69 and won by a record 12 strokes from Tom Kite. His total of 270, 18 under par, broke the previous record of Nicklaus and Ray Floyd by one stroke. He was the youngest winner at 21 and set records for the last 63 holes (22 under par) and the second nine (16 under for the week). He was the first player to win a major on his first appearance as a professional since Jerry Pate at the 1976 US Open.

And he was the first golfer not from a Caucasian background to win the Masters. The club had only admitted its first black
member in 1991 and it took until 1975 for Lee Elder to become the first black golfer to play in the Masters – Charlie Sifford, who was excluded from the PGA Tour for years, had shamefully not been invited when he won two Tour events in the late 1960s. ‘It’s all over with now,’ Sifford said. ‘Lee Elder played, now Tiger has won it. I’m proud of them both.’ Elder was in the gallery on the last day. ‘I came to see history,’ he said. ‘To have a black champion of a major makes my heart feel very good.’ Woods, wearing his already-traditional Sunday red, hugged his father Earl after putting out on the 18th green and said: ‘I wasn’t the pioneer. Charlie Sifford, Lee Elder, Ted Rhodes, those guys paved the way. Coming up 18, I said a little prayer of thanks to those guys.’

When Nicklaus came on the scene, Jones, sitting on a golf cart at his beloved Augusta, famously said: ‘He plays a game with which I’m not familiar.’ Now Nicklaus said of Woods: ‘It is not my time any more, it’s his. Tiger is out there playing another game. He is playing a golf course he will own for a long time. This young man will win many more Masters.’ A year earlier, in 1996 when Woods was still an amateur, Nicklaus had predicted that the younger man would be the favourite at Augusta for the next 20 years, which has proved exactly the case.

Woods’s golf reached a sublime peak in the summer of 2000 when he won the US Open at Pebble Beach by a record 15 strokes – at 12 under par when the best of the rest, Ernie Els and Miguel Angel Jiménez, were three over par – without ever three-putting. He then won the Open Championship at St Andrews by eight strokes, from Thomas Bjorn and Els, again, with a record score of 19 under and without going in a bunker all week on the Old Course. Nicklaus said: ‘When he gets ahead, I think he is superior to me.
I never spread-eagled the field.’ Then Woods won the US PGA at Valhalla, after a dramatic playoff against Bob May, the obscure golfer who came closest to halting Tiger’s assault on history.

Having perfected a fade under the tutelage of Butch Harmon, Norman’s old coach, Woods spent the eight months from August 2000 to April 2001 working a draw back into his game, especially for Augusta and the tee shot at the 13th hole. In 1953, Ben Hogan won the three majors he played in, while Jones claimed the original, old-school Grand Slam in 1930. No one had held all four of the modern Grand Slam events at the same time. Woods took the lead on the third day of the 2001 Masters and kept his nose in front on the last day despite being challenged by Duval, who finished second by two strokes, and Phil Mickelson, who finished three back. Whether it was a Grand Slam, a term usually used to refer to winning all four in the same year, or a Tiger Slam, the man himself could not care less. ‘I’ve got all four trophies on my coffee table at home, that’s pretty neat,’ he said.

Woods in his prime was a combination of Faldo and Norman in theirs. He had the physical ability, power and panache of Norman but he also possessed the course management skills, the determination and the ability to play his own game and let others make mistakes that were the hallmarks of Faldo’s game. Woods would never have let a six-shot lead go in the final round of a major. He would have been the one not making a mistake and forcing his opponent to play more aggressively than the circumstances could allow. Only once in 15 occasions when he led a major with a round to play did Woods not win. Although, all 14 of the majors that he has won to date came when he at least shared the lead with a round to go, while four times Faldo came from behind to win.

As Augusta made various changes to the course over the years, ‘Tiger-proofing’ became the nickname for the process. They were necessary as players were able to hit the ball farther, thanks in large part to improvements in the ball and driver clubheads. The Big Three of Nicklaus, Palmer and Gary Player used their annual trips to Augusta to preach the necessity of ‘rolling back’ the ball, stopping it from flying so far, otherwise ‘we’ll be teeing off downtown’, as Nicklaus said. The most significant changes were the introduction of a second cut of fairway, a sort of semi-rough, in 1999, and the lengthening of nine holes in 2002 and six more in 2006, plus the addition of more pines in places to pinch in various fairways.

The philosophy that the difficulty of the approach shots needed to be returned to their former values was correct. When players could bomb a drive without thinking and then play a wedge for their second shot, it took away the subtlety of the design. But not all the changes were welcomed and when cold weather plagued both the 2007 and 2008 tournaments, the golf appeared to have become too attritional. Some intelligent massaging of the set-up has brought the thrills back for the players and the fans but is the end result that the course has indeed been Tiger-proofed?

Lengthening a course and making it more difficult should only play into the hands of a long hitter who happens to be the best player in the world by a country mile. So it was in 2001 and 2002, and again in 2005. But after collecting his fourth green jacket, Tiger’s Masters run has stalled. Of course, he has not won a major at all since 2008 but his Masters drought predates his winning the 2008 US Open with a broken leg – perhaps drawing too deeply on his well of determination and perseverance in the process – as well as the scandal over his extramarital affairs which broke over Thanksgiving 2009.