So Tiger Woods said yes to the Masters. He had to, right?
If he had flown there to practice and then benched himself for the event, what would it have said about him — other than that he’s fine with wasting jet fuel?
Augusta National is Woods’ warm cup of tea, his safe haven.
Sure, it will be 62 days between competitive rounds when Woods tees it up Thursday at Augusta. That’s a tap of the snooze bar compared with 2010, when his scandal-induced layoff numbered 144 days.
No one heckled him that day. Masters patrons are too genteel, too grateful to be munching on $2 sandwiches as they walk on golf’s most idyllic inland property.
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The only trash talk came from a plane carrying this banner: “TIGER DID YOU MEAN BOOTYISM?”
It’s a safe bet Woods didn’t notice. He made two eagles and shot 68, his first ever sub-70 in a Masters first round.
So rust won’t be a factor next week. But here’s what will be — mental scars.
By Golf Digest’s count, Tiger mis-hit 19 short-game shots in his six PGA Tour rounds this year. Nineteen.
Patrick Reed has been the tour’s best scrambler this season, getting it up-and-down 70.33 percent of the time. Charlie Beljan has been the worst at 45.75.
Two months ago in Phoenix, the last time he completed two rounds, Woods’ scrambling rate was 27 percent. My mom gets it up-and-down that often.
ESPN analyst Paul Azinger believes Woods’ chipping problem is “not a difficult fix. I don’t think he had the yips. I think he was just in a terrible setup position to deliver the club.”
I’m not buying it. Neither is NBC/Golf Channel analyst Brandel Chamblee: “It’s unimaginable to me that in this time (off) he would have been able to come to any sort of manageable level of short game.
“At Phoenix, Tiger chipped it (on average) 30 feet from the hole — three times as bad as the very worst guy on the PGA Tour. I’ve read where people say it wasn’t the yips. Call it whatever you want, but it was catastrophically bad.”
As someone who needed four chips to hit — and stay on — the elevated third green after I won the media lottery to play the course in 2010, I can promise that this is not the place to discover your short game. Tight lies, sloped banks and fast greens can be a deflating combination.
Eighteen years ago, the Tribune’s Masters preview ran under this headline: “Tiger won’t tame Augusta.”
As it turned out, Truman did defeat Dewey. Woods won by 12 strokes.
At the risk of allowing history to repeat itself, I offer this: Tiger won’t tame Augusta.
This time we mean it.
Twitter @TeddyGreenstein