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Sunday, April 13, 2008
So much for a Grand Slam
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Augusta — So we say farewell and take our leave of the Grand Slam for another year — not to disregard the eminence of Trevor Immelman of South Africa. But until this moment, no one had raised his name in that regard until the sun went down on Tiger Woods at the Masters Sunday.
First, the Grand Slam is a fabrication. It’s a creation of four parts which began as “The Impregnable Quadrilateral,” a phrase created by a New York sports writer named George Trevor (honest). It was later simplified by O.B. Keeler, an Atlanta Journal sportswriter who rode side-saddle with Bobby Jones on his ascension to glory. I’m sure that O.B. didn’t do it all by himself, but he was at the head of the class. He was at Jones’ side as the gentleman amateur from Atlanta won the British Open and Amateur and the U.S. Open and Amateur tournaments in 1929, then went into retirement. He remains forever revered as “president in perpetuity” of Augusta National Golf Club.
Much too much had been written and spoken of the fixation on Woods, and his self-declared pursuit of this holy grail of golf. His declaration was not made as such, but became an assumption that he never debunked, nor aw-pshawed. This Masters, the 72nd, was to be the launching point, but as it evolved on Sunday afternoon, it was one convoluted round of golf, highlighted — or low-lighted — by some of the less memorable play recorded in this hallowed refuge of the Green Jacket.
Immelman managed to bring it off Sunday with a round of 75, and from start to finish, the South African called on every nerve in his 5-foot, 9-inch frame. He was, it appeared, as tightly wound as one of the golf balls he struck, but held together through a daunting afternoon. Treacherous weather had been projected, and treacherous it was. The wind blew furiously most of the round, tugging at players’ trouser legs and causing flags to dance wildly in the cups.
Through all this, the low round of 68 was posted by the Spaniard Miguel Angel Jimenez, he of the hair bun. Jimenez checked in early with a round of 68, good for a tie-8th score of 287. Only three others were under par, Heath Slocum at 69 and Stuart Appleby and Nick Watney at 71. So after four years of home-grown champions, the Green Jacket takes another trip across foreign borders. Mike Weir of Canada was the champion in 2003.
Immelman is not a winner without a championship portfolio. He won the Western Open in 2006, his first PGA Tour success, but he had won previously on U.S. soil. He and Rory Sabbatini won the World Cup for South Africa, played at Kiawah Island in 2003. Five times he had won other international tournaments. His father, Johan, is commissioner of the Sunshine Tour in South Africa, and an older brother is a golf professional who triggered his interest in the game.
What’s amazing is that Immelman has moved along below the radar among those foreign players who frequent the American tour. He does maintain a residence near Orlando and another in a London suburb. It was a kind of day that wore heavily on all 45 of the players who survived the cut, and not until the average score is posted will we know just how much was real golf and how much was merely survival. Not one player on the leaderboard, save Jimenez, improved his score.
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