Phil, Tiger bring back the roars,
finish Masters with a whimper
AUGUSTA, Ga. – If you were standing on No. 1 tee at 3:16 p.m. Sunday, the final day of the 2009 Masters, and looking up the first fairway, then it was at about 11 o’clock on the day, the way bomber pilots like to put it, that an enormous thunder erupted. It was like Vesuvius had erupted, just over the horizon. “Tiger musta eagled,” someone said, near the scoring hut.
Then came a smaller roar. Big, but not thunderous.
“Phil – he musta birdied,” someone said.
Someone checked a computer nearby. Right – Woods eagled, Mickelson birdied.
The thunder had come from about where No. 8 green sits, and that’s about where Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson would been, having teed off at 1:35, an hour ahead of the leaders, Kenny Perry and Angel Cabrera, who were then back at No. 4, looking plenty safe at 11 under.
Fate and the scoring had put Mickelson and Woods together. Was the old friction still there? Was this a shootout? There was no way to tell. Except for some extroverts like Lee Trevino and Fuzzy Zoeller, golfers go their solitary ways, even when they’re playing together.
“Well, you just go about your own business,” Woods said.
No matter. The pairing of Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson was like the greatest matchups in
heavyweight lore – Ali-Frazier, Yankees-Red Sox. The real Masters was on. It had to be embarrassing for three guys toiling away behind them in the silence of the leaders. Kenny Perry and Chad Campbell and Angel Cabrera might as well have been playing in an Easter League somewhere.
Mickelson was on fire. He started seven strokes off the lead, and had consumed the front nine with four straight birdies from No. 5, six for a 30.That pulled him from nowhere into a tie for the lead. Woods had birdied No. 2, then eagled No. 8 and was out in 33 and at 7 under and on the fringe of real contention. His fifth Masters title lay just in the distance. Behind them, Perry, stubborn as any dusty mule back home in Kentucky, was grinding out pars. When birdies wouldn’t drop, pars are good.
Then what had started out as a Roman Triumph turned into the Carnival of the Animals.
“I was hitting quick hoods, blocks, name it,” Woods said. “It was just terrible. I don’t know what was going on.”
Mickelson found the sunny side. “It was fun,” he said. “We’ve had some good matches in the past. “I’m usually on the wrong end of it, but it was fun playing with him.”
First, it was Mickelson at the nasty little par-3 12th, a hole that has vexed him forever. Woods hit an 8-iron to about 15 feet to the left. Then es
corted by the groans and disbelief of thousands, Mickelson’s tee shot came down shot, hit the far bank of the pond, and trickled back into the water. He was leading Woods by two at the time. Had he choked?
There’s no way to know, of course, but it didn’t look like a choke shot. It was a punch shot. It looked like a guy trying to steer the ball. Like a guy trying to get inside the other guy, to one-up him. If appearances can be believed, it was the first time that Mickelson was playing Woods instead of the course.
“I was trying to hit a 9-iron over the bunker,” Mickelson said. “But that was really a terrible swing, after so many good iron shots that I had hit. To miss it that far right of where I was aimed was costly.”
Actually, it was creeping suicide. Mickelson double-bogeyed.
“And 12 is actually a good hole for me, historically,” he said.
But history suggests that where some people look for monsters under the bed, Mickelson looks for the 12th. In 17 Masters, he’s 14 over par on that hole. That double bogey was his sixth in 66 rounds. He’s played it under par in only three Masters, and he won two of them.
Mickelson bounced back with a birdie at the 13th, matching Woods, and both birdied the 15th, and Mickelson held on to a one-shot lead. On Woods, that is. Perry, in case anyone was wondering, was leading the Masters by one, Mickelson by two and Woods by three.
Woods caught Mickelson with a stiff tee shot at the par-3 16th, where he rolled in that lazy chip shot in 2005. He birdied to Mickelson’s par and they were tied at 10 under.
“When I birdied 16, I was right there,”
Woods said. From right there, he went into the trees at the 17th and bogeyed, and then went into the trees at the 18th, and even bounced his attempted escape shot off another tree. He bogeyed again.
Mickelson was sort of holding himself together. He parred the 17th, but only after missing a short birdie putt. Then at the 18th, with Woods in trouble in the trees, Mickelson hit his tee shot into the fairway bunker at the corner. Sandy Lyle won the 1987 Masters with a brilliant 7-iron from that bunker. Mickelson missed the green and bogeyed.
Mickelson shot 67 and finished fifth, three off the lead. Woods shot 68 and tied for sixth, four off.
The infection hit the leaders behind them. Perry went on to drop every gift of the gods, Campbell couldn’t find the spark, and Cabrera – who won the 2007 U. S. Open also by surprise -- made a miracle par out of the trees on the first playoff hole, and then a routine par on the second to beat Perry, by this time a confused frazzle of disbelief.
What had started with roars on a beautiful, balmy Georgia Sunday, ended with a whimper.
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