AUGUSTA: There are 91 players in Augusta this week for the Masters. Yet, it seems, it is just Tiger Woods and 90 others.
There really is no dearth of story lines: there is Scottie Scheffler, who took just 42 days from racking up his first PGA Tour win to becoming world No.1; there is Rory McIlroy, who since 2014 is trying to add the Green Jacket to complete the collection to join the elite list with a Career Slam; then there is Hideki Matsuyama, who worked so hard to serve the flavours of Japan at the Champions Dinner on Tuesday, while trying to get 100 per cent fit for his title defence. They are all raring to go.
The list of multiple Major champions here is long. It is led by with McIlroy (last of his four Majors came in 2014), to Brooks Koepka (last of four in 2019); to Jordan Spieth (last Major was in 2017) to the consistent Dustin Johnson (last of two Majors was the 2020 Masters) and Collin Morikawa (second of two came in 2021).
To the above add a bunch of one-timers like Jon Rahm, whose run of 36 weeks as No, 1 was ended by Scheffler last fortnight; the 2017 PGA Championship winner, Justin Thomas, who has never missed a cut at Augusta. Lest we forget, there is the 30-yearold Hideki San, whose Masters win gave a troubled but golf-crazy Japan enough strength to endure the pain of a delayed Olympic Games in Covid times.
Matsuyama is now fighting a long list of ailments as he wants to take back the Green Jacket and wear it more often than he did in the past 12 months. We now come to latest to join this list of contenders - Scheffler, who signalled his arrival at the Ryder Cup with 2.5 points from three matches.
Winless for long on the PGA Tour, he has won three times in his last five starts to jump past Rahm to No. 1 in the world. Scheffler prefers to stay away from the arc lights.
“I would say Tiger takes a lot of attention away from all of us, which I think is a good thing for us. Tiger is the needle for professional golf,” said Scheffler. He is not alone in that wish. What about his own golf and the fact he is No. 1? “So for me, the rankings was never really something I ever looked at,”
So, how did he prepare?
“I’m not going to talk about the golf because that didn’t go as well for me, but I destroyed them (friends including the in-form Sam Burns) in board games last night, which was fun.”
Indeed, there’s been no paucity of stories, nor contenders. Yet, ever since the week began, there is one story that has dwarfed all others. Tiger Woods.
When the Masters was last held in 2019 in the world as we knew it before Covid wrenched the fun out of it, it was Tiger winning his 15th Major. The chase to Jack Nicklaus’ 18 Majors that was halted after the 2008 US Open, re-started in April 2019. A modest 2020 followed before the car accident on February 23, 2021 left him in
a state where it was difficult to say if he would ever play golf again, let alone win at it.
Yet, nine months after the accident and before Tiger teamed up with his son, Charlie, for a father-son tournament, he seemed to have been re-born as a three-second swing video of his saying ‘Making Progress’ emerged.
It set in motion the chatter of when he would return to competitive golf Majors.
Bring on the 86th Masters.
