It would not be a Grand Slam. But in degree of difficulty it would rank second only to Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak.
It would be even more beyond belief than Byron Nelson’s 11-tournament winning streak, Walter Payton’s 13-season career rushing record of 16,726 yards, Bud Wilkinson’s 47-game winning streak, Bill Russell’s 11 NBA championships in 13 years and Michael Jordan’s six in eight.
It would be because this is the world’s hardest and loneliest game played on the most pressure-packed stage in sports. This is golf. Worse this is the Masters, contested in the heavenly hell known as Augusta National.
This is a tournament that ends on a back nine that tests nerves beyond even a Super Bowl or World Series or Wimbledon. So much can go so inexplicably wrong in what Ben Crenshaw calls “this mystical cathedral.” So many watery graves down among the sky-high pines and startling azaleas.
If Tiger Woods wins this Masters, it obviously won’t give him a Grand Slam. By original definition a Slam means winning golf’s four biggest tournaments in the same calendar year. Atlanta sportswriter O.B. Keeler borrowed the term from bridge to tie a bow around the four most prestigious events of the time (the U.S. and British Opens and Amateurs) won in 1930 by Bobby Jones.
Today the degree of difficulty of winning even one Masters, U.S. Open, British Open or PGA is as great as Jones faced in finishing off his Slam. Woods won last year’s U.S. then British then–you’re kidding–PGA.
But the fact remains that he basically blew last year’s Masters–and Slam–during Thursday’s first round when he double-bogeyed No. 11 and tripled No. 13 and couldn’t climb back into contention. Jones, who turned an exotic nursery into Augusta National and invented the Masters, was safe. Some say his ghost blew Woods’ ball back into Rae’s Creak.
Yet for some of us sure that the only Grand Slam we ever would see was at Wrigley, Comiskey or Denny’s, goose bumps are rising. This is Super Bowl week meets Academy Awards. Woods has a chance to become the first to hold all four titles simultaneously. If we can’t have a man on Mars, at least give us Halley’s Comet. If we can’t have a calendar year at least give us four in a row. From fore! to four!
Give us a new nickname. How about the Grand Quadruple?
But first Woods must prove he can turn this former nursery into his personal playpen the way Jack Nicklaus predicted he would. Woods took the Masters and world by storm in 1997 with a 12-shot victory. Since then he hasn’t been in contention once when “the tournament starts” on Sunday’s back nine. He has tied for eighth and 18th and finished an off-camera fifth.
Of course as he rebuilt his swing after the ’97 runaway, he went 10 straight majors without winning. Meanwhile, Augusta was “Tigerized” with light rough and strategically placed fairway bunkers, and scientists invented atomic clubs and balls that have virtual Tigers coming out of the Woods. The result isn’t that the Masters is that much harder for Woods to win. It’s that much easier to steal for fairways-and-greens singles hitters like ’98 winner Mark O’Meara and defending champ Vijay Singh.
Singh was the most unlikely Masters winner ever. A goofball who had tried every form of putting short of a cue stick–who admitted this was the one major he could not win–was holing snakes like Chevy Chase in “Caddyshack,” surviving a ball in the water at 11 and one in the azaleas at 12 and walking off in a green jacket. Once only long-bombing royalty won the Masters. Now the usual 15 or 20 players with legitimate chances to win has doubled.
I’ll dust off my annual prediction that it’s Phil Mickelson’s turn. No doubt he has the distance and touch. But he still couldn’t beat Woods eye-to-eye on Sunday’s back nine. Nobody could. This Masters is Woods’ to lose on Thursday and Friday. If he’s smelling it on Saturday and he’s in or near the lead halfway through Sunday, Quad City here he comes.
But he will feel more pressure than he ever has on Thursday’s first tee. If Woods fails for a fourth straight time at Augusta, it officially will have his number. But if he wins, let the legitimate Grand Slam buildup begin. Let Woods feel the tension as it was meant to build.
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If Woods wins four in a calendar year, where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio? Even his 56-game streak would pale.