The Glorious Guest Post: One Day Left in Augusta

Hello, friends. My name is Ted, and most of you know me as the author of this sub-par site, although I do blog other places. The good guys at Sports Flow invited me aboard as a contributor down the road; my first piece, right here and right now, will be about The Masters. The tradition unlike any other has a mere 18 hours until its resolution - until the green jacket is gracefully slid onto someone's trembling shoulders (that is, unless Nick Faldo goes commando style and throws the thing on himself, then runs off the course waving a shotgun at anyone who dares to stop him).




I'll be the first to admit: I don't know much about golf. One of my good friends can list every single Masters winner since 1951 from memory, and was listening to The Masters on the radio at 9am this past Thursday. I'm not him; I was more inclined to write this post about "Masters of their Domain," because I know far more about George Costanza and Darren McFadden (the truest master of his domain in the sports world) than I do about any of these guys. Still, here's my thoughts:

At work this morning - uh, yea, I work on weekends - one of my friends inquired, "Who the hell is Brett Wetterich?" Another, more knowledgable on golf, began to answer. When the first then re-upped the question ante with, "Does he have any chance here?" the latter came back with a simple, yet elegant, statement: "He's going to need a lot of diapers by the end of the day, he'll be pissing his pants so much."

Indeed, Wetterich is not high atop the leader board as Masters Sunday looms. Rather, a familiar face - who shouldn't necessarily be - is. Tiger Woods bogied the last two holes on Saturday, yet still finds himself in the final pairing with Stuart Appleby, who is really good at winning championships named after luxury cars, yet would probably validate his professional resume with this one. Nantz made a big deal on Saturday about how every Masters winner since 1991 has emerged from the final pairing to walk, and Woods - at the time Nantz was harmoniously poeticizing onward in the clubhouse - was not slated to be in that group. It seemed to be headed for Rose and Appleby, and then Rose gagged on expectations and various other pollutants, and Woods found his way to a familiar place.

My question for Masters Sunday, then, is: Can anyone stop Tiger? If he's walking in the final group, is he at all beatable? Knowing how he approaches things, and taking into account the fact that he cannot be happy about his two bogies at the end Saturday, do you really think he'd be walking the course in a remotely tight game on Sunday and bogy those holes again? Don't you think he'd probably birdie at least one of them, knowing him and his "there are no rainy days" devotion to excellence?

I do. Then again, I get all my golf information via Wikipedia - I was just saddened to learn that Stuart Appleby's wife died in a freak accident back in 1998, surprised to discover that Justin Rose is from South Africa, and humorously aghast that Nick Faldo changes wives with the regularity some people wash their hands - so I wouldn't necessarily trust my pearls of wisdom here. Harrington is 1 off Woods, Phil and Retief and D. Toms (he was on The Simpsons! Oh crap, that was Tom Kite) are 3 off his pace, and Ernie Els is hovering way back farther than he should be, ready to make an unprecedented Sunday drive.

The simple fact of the matter is, it's Tiger's to lose. He'll walk that back nine with the fierce determination and competitive fire you've come to expect from him, the same fire that single-handedly allows you to respect Stanford basketball more at the games he attends. There are no rainy days in Tiger's world, you see, and there are no April Sundays in Augusta that don't end with a little green.