SF Examiner: Tiger injects life into the Masters

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AUGUSTA, GA. – One word. One name. Tiger. And it all changes, in golf, in sports. One name, and we’re thinking differently. One name, and we’re paying attention again.


One name, and the game is on.


It’s not a comeback for Tiger Woods. Not at the Masters. He was here in ’08, as in ’07 and the 12 years before that, two as an amateur.


He missed golf for eight months, June to February, recovering from knee surgery. And certainly golf, so dependent on individual stars, missed him.


But here under the Georgia pines, here where Amen Corner lurks, here where history can be found on virtually every magnificently trimmed fairway or hellishly fast green, it’s as if nothing has changed. Because nothing has changed.


Tiger is playing and thus, weeks of rehabbing and months of doubts to the contrary, Tiger is the favorite.


What a great few days in sports, the Final Four, the beginning of baseball season, the Masters. A tradition like no other, CBS tells us. Tiger Woods, a golfer like no other, and nobody needs to tell us.


What the fans tell Tiger, shout it out, is “You’re the man.” Which he is. Golf is dozens of great players, Phil Mickelson, Anthony Kim, Geoff Ogilvy, Greg Norman, returning to his scene of heartbreak. Golf is one person, Tiger Woods.


Does he do it this week, win a fifth Masters, a 15th major? Or does he fail, and his short streak without a Masters victory extend to four, which would be the longest since he turned pro and, with that crushing triumph in 1997, turned golf upside down?


Either way, Tiger becomes the tale, the focus. Either we’re going to say, “How about Tiger?” or “What happened to Tiger?” The world distilled into good and bad, right and wrong, Tiger or not Tiger.


The Giants and A’s have started their long season.


The 49ers and Raiders are trying to figure into the NFL Draft. All of it is interesting, as opposed to Tiger, who is compelling.


Golf, as tennis, is constructed on personalities. Arnie took the game out of the country clubs. Jack Nicklaus awed us with his success. Greg Norman was exciting, sometimes in a negative way. Then along came Tiger, breaking par, breaking barriers, becoming as much a symbol of progress as a champion athlete.


And now here he is, and here the Masters is, and we can’t help but pay attention and perhaps pay obeisance to arguably the finest golfer ever and maybe the best-run tournament ever.


The Masters the last couple of years hasn’t been as exciting as we remembered. The weather was cold. The course had been toughened. The familiar roars of appreciative fans were lacking.


Tiger the last three years wasn’t quite as exciting at the Masters as we preferred, although two third places and a second isn’t exactly a collapse. More a tease.


“The last couple years, my putting has been streaky here,” was Tiger’s explanation before today’s first round. “I got on rolls where I make everything, and I get on rolls where I didn’t make anything.”


For sure, Tiger has made himself impossible to ignore.


Art Spander has been covering Bay Area sports since 1965 and also writes on www.artspander.com and www.realclearsports.com. E-mail him at typoes@aol.com.

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