Major glory beckons at Masters
Tiger’s comeback adds another dimension to the interest created by Augusta’s showpiece
IN more than just a few ways the Masters Tournament is unique when compared to the other three Major championships.
For one, it’s the only event of the four Grand Slams whose venue does not rotate – Augusta National Golf Club in Augusta, Georgia serves as the course where the first Major champion of the season is crowned. It’s always played in the first week of April and the field is by invitation only.
This season’s Masters that starts on Thursday intriguingly holds promise of being the most openly contested in many a year and for the first time in a little while has one Tiger Woods as a genuine pre-tournament contender.
Woods, of course, will not begin his quest for a fifth Green Jacket
– one of sport’s most famous and coveted prizes – as the favourite .
That honour, if it can be called that, goes to Northern Ireland’s Rory McIlroy and 24-year-old American Justin Thomas.
But Woods will have his support and it may well be more than any other player in the field on Thursday, if only because of his record and his rather outstanding comeback this season after months and months on the sidelines through injury, surgery and recuperation. There were telling signs of him returning to his old self in the brief period that he has played tournament golf since last December.
For many, McIlroy will get the nod. His 14th PGA Tour victory at the Arnold Palmer Invitational two weeks ago was highlighted by a sublime final round 64. That’s the best he’s played in a long time and it swept him up to seventh in the world rankings. And so it should be – a player of his caliber belongs in the top-10.
He might have been out of sorts for some time and for a number of reasons – least he has suffered from injury and also endured some personal hardships. But the 28-yearold four-time Major championship winner is back. And the good thing is he believes he can exorcise the demons of 2011 when he led going into the final day before imploding with an 80.
It’s like he has got a score to settle with Augusta and this might just be his year. A win would sit nicely with his resume. It would bring up his career Grand Slam. He won the US Open (2011), the PGA Championship (2012, 2014) and the British Open (2014).
Thomas, who has already got two wins this season, is certainly the in-form player heading to Augusta.
He clinched the CJ Cup in South Korea last October and then over the past three weeks he won the Honda Classic, was runner-up at the WGC-Mexico Championship and came up just short in the semi-finals of the WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play last weekend.
A victory at the Masters would not surprise many and it would go some way to strengthening his bid to retain his PGA Tour Player of the Year title.
Such is Thomas’ stock right now that he is less than half a point in second place behind Dustin Johnson in the world rankings. And without the first Major played yet this season he leads the seasonlong FedEx Cup standings by almost 400 points and has seasonal earnings of more than US$5mil.
World number one Johnson will likewise head to Augusta National Golf Club with more than enough of a game to leave the place with the Green Jacket.
A freak accident on the eve of the event last year derailed his chances when he was red-hot favourite to win. Even if he does go into the Masters as the third best bet, he is not far behind the two leading players.
Johnson was unceremoniously eliminated from last week’s WGC-Match Play in the group stages but he has had a victory, a second-place finish and another top-10 in his last five starts on Tour. So there is no doubting that he can, and will be keen to get his game in tune for Augusta.
The portal usatoday.com has got Woods joint favourite for the Green Jacket alongside McIlroy and Johnson. But I’d like to think that if Woods does play well, as we expect him to, he’ll at best finish in the topfour.
With 14 Major championship titles – four of them at the Masters – under his belt and the nice comeback, highlighted by two topfive finishes in his last two PGA Tour events, including the Arnold Palmer Invitational, Woods’ backers can certainly claim he has a genuine shot at the honours this week.
His last triumph at Augusta was back in 2005 and his last Major win was at the US Open in 2008. He has had his ups and downs since then, but if he were to win this week, one gets the feeling that world golf itself will enjoy a rebooting of sorts.
There is no player that generates as much (global) interest in sport when he’s playing well as Woods does. And at the moment he’s playing well.
The television ratings spiked for the two events that he played recently and the Augusta Chronicle reported Woods’ comeback as the cause for ticket prices for this week’s Masters to soar on the secondary market. That’s the kind of clout Woods has.
Jordan Spieth does not command as much sway, but he does have a fair amount of his own.
However, the 24-year-old Texan is in short supply of good form. He’s had just two top-10s to show for his eight starts in this campaign so far.
Yet despite this he is well backed by the bookies.
In fact, by more than just a few, he comes in at number five on the table. Much of that is down Spieth’s pedigree at Augusta.
He has played the Masters four times – he’s won it once (2015) and had two runner-up spots as well. The worst he has done at Augusta was 11th last year. Thus, it’s easy to see why many would still back him.
Notwithstanding this, there is also
Rory McIlroy seems to have peaked at just the right time for an assault on the Masters, where he has an old score to settle.
suupport for some of the other leading caandidates from the woorld Tours. Among thhe main pretenders arre England’s Justin
Roose, last week’s WGC
Match Play winner and twwo-time Masters champion Buubba Watson, Australian
Jason Day,
WGC-WMexico champion and fivve-time Major winner, including thhree
Masters tittles, Phil
Michelson annd
Sppain’s rissing star
Jon Rahm.
With such a ddiverse and potent field, the Masters shhould again serve us with some tantalizing golf, featuring an open tournament that continues to set itself appart from the other Majors.