The Masters: Tiger's charge proves he's back, once and for all

CBS Sports ^ | 04/10/2011 | Mike Freeman

[JoeProBono]

[bcsco]

Again, as I have noted before, where are these Europeans that you're talking about?

Let's look at it this way. From the PGA leaderboard for the Masters, taking my own count:

Total contenders:99...46 Americans, 53 foreigners.
Made the cut: 21 Americans, 28 foreigners
Missed the cut: 25 Americans, 25 foreigners

Foreigners had 28 of 53 players make the cut (53%). Americans 21 of 46 (46%). 54% of all who were eligible to contend for the cut were foreigners.

That's what I'm getting at.

[jessduntno]

“Are you kidding? He’s 35 years old. An apt comparison to Tiger, in my mind, is Tom Watson.”

No, I’m not kidding. Jack won 6 of his majors at 35+ (over a 24 year period) and Tiger is only 4 behind him now - after 11 years...and consider the conditioning available today. Not hard to imagine at all. And there are no serious competitors to Woods when he is back, this weekend notwithstanding. A couple of good rounds doesn’t make you Woods or Nicklaus, Arnold or Watson. That’s some pretty rarefied air.

Arnie only won 7 over an 8 year period. As for Watson, he won 7 total, also over an eight year period. How you could compare Watson and Woods is bewildering. Watson LIFETIME had about half the tourny wins Woods had after 11 years.

I think the reason people scoff at comparing Woods to Jack is that Jack Nicklaus is Golf personified, not his race, although some of the posts about Woods, even here, show that is somewhat a factor.

If you were comparing him to Walter Hagen, you might have an easier time, even though a lot of people really underestimate Hagen (maybe to long ago?) for some reason, he was a truly great golfer with some bad (some rumored even nasty) habits off field. Comparing him to Jack or Arnold is real tough to do, but they themselves have said it, that he is the most complete GOLFER they have ever seen. Jack believes Tiger will break his record. He is on record as saying he hopes he’s there to shake his hand when it happens.

Hard to top that for being a gentleman.

[blau993]

While I was impressed with most aspects of his game (like the 230 yard shot to the green off the pinestraw underneath the Eisenhower pine — vintage Tiger), he didn’t seem to have his old ability to sink the pressure putts. That was the one weakness that I noticed.

[Lmo56]

Tiger is overhyped, (not overrated). The analysts all say that the tournament begins on the back nine on Sunday. Tiger’s back nine today was ordinary at best. Schwartzel’s string of birdies on the final four holes to win the Masters was absolutely incredible. The authors assertion that the young man from Northern Ireland folded because he was intimidated by Woods is absolute BS in my opinion.

Agreed. Tiger's back nine was PAR [Birdie cancelling out the Bogey]. And McElroy folded simply because he IS a 21-year old who finally realized the enormity of the entire situation on the last day ...