THE MAGIC SHOW
Augusta set to serve up the mother of all majors
AUGUSTA National yesterday awoke to reveal a game entranced and a major championship season under the magic spell of possibility. Has the first day of a Masters ever dawned with quite the excitement surrounding this one? Maybe in 2001, when the great Tiger Woods was in hot pursuit of an unprecedented fourth consecutive major and everyone knew we were about to embark on four days that would rewrite history.
Back then, however, there really was only one story in golf while now there is an endless fund of feelgood tales, particularly if you happen to reside within the United Kingdom.
Now the great Tiger Woods is merely very good, and his compelling struggle to rescue his career is at a fascinating tipping-point. A 15th major victory would rekindle his ultimate goal of overtaking Jack Nicklaus’s total of 18 but a close defeat would emphasise that no one is scared of him any more.
Over the past five weeks we’ve been treated to a stunning collection of high- class winners, with victories for players ranked number one, two, four, six and nine in the world. With so many of the best players in such rich form, no wonder the overwhelming prediction is for a tournament for the ages.
But we know golf. This is not tennis or the Premier League, where the list of potential winners stretches no further than the fingers of one hand. Perhaps it’s worth remembering what happened here 25 years ago, when two of the great players of the age, Greg Norman and Severiano Ballesteros, lined up in a suddendeath play-off alongside someone called Larry Mize, and the plucky Augusta native played the role of Dr Killjoy to perfection.
Indeed, you have to go back to this tournament two years ago to find the last time a major conformed to prediction and Phil Mickelson lived up to his billing. Since then we’ve had seven successive major winners whose common thread was that they all came into the event under the radar, with no demands on their time and no one predicting they were about to fulfil every player’s dream of lifting one of the four biggest titles in the game. Ten of the past 11 major victors have been first-time winners, lending substance to the theory that the game is currently embroiled in one of those wildly unpredictable periods. When you look at the calibre of the players who could extend that sequence — Luke Donald, Justin Rose, Lee Westwood, Adam Scott, Jason Day, Ian Poulter, Bubba Watson and the hottest player on the planet, Hunter Mahan, to name but eight — perhaps it pays to expect the unexpected.
But it can’t last forever, and so here we find ourselves at a wondrous crossroads, where one road leads down the path of the Rory era, another to the dawn of a Rory-tiger rivalry and others to continuing the state of flux.
The truth is there are so many realistic scenarios. To list but three: England’s leading players ending their major drought stretching back to 1996; Europe ending its barren Augusta run dating back to 1999; Australia getting a first green jacket in the 76th edition of this much-anticipated event.
No prizes, though, for guessing where the focus lies at the start. It is plainly ludicrous to proclaim that Tiger-rory is the only story in golf, as Sports Illustrated magazine did, but equally, by some distance, it is the biggest story.
Like two prize fighters they are on opposite sides of the draw today, with Tiger given the opportunity to land the first blow early on and Mcilroy having to wait until almost 2pm (7pm UK time) until he can deliver his response, before they swap tee-times tomorrow.
One of the nice details of this story is how w a camaraderie has been established, and an obvious warmth. Once there had been a frostiness, with Mcilroy making some caustic remarks about Woods at the last Ryder r Cup and the latter responding in kind.
Now Rory wants to take it all back, while Woods paid the Northern Irishman the biggest compliment anyone can remember him making regarding an opponent. ‘ He has all of the makings of f being a great champion for a long period of f time,’ said Woods.
Is it too much to hope that out of the haze of the first two rounds the two greatest players of successive generations are conjoined by the weekend? That the UK’S other two players in the world’s top three don’t succumb to the oft-dramatic effect of f expectation? Just one cloud hugs the horizon. One great black cloud, actually. Let’s hope the stormy weather doesn’t play too big a part, and break this magic spell.
derek.lawrenson@dailymail.co.uk