The Masters launches Thursday as not only the glorious first major of the season, but also as a sort of referendum on what kind of golf fan you are.
We have been told the casual golf fan was lost once Tiger Woods announced that his back would keep him from competing here, for the first time in 20 years. The definition of “casual golf fan” varies: Someone with clubs made by Ronco; someone who owns only one white belt and no pants that glow in the dark; one who believes any tournament without Woods might as well be the John Deere Classic.
Dedicated golf fans, though, will shrug off Woods’ absence and report to their 60-inch HD window on the Masters to be transported to an event more timeless than any one player’s spine.
Whatever the viewpoint, this Masters represents the symbolic beginning of a transitional period in pro golf. Consider this tournament a trial run for that inevitable time when Woods, 38, no longer can compete.
“There’s going to be a day when Tiger is just not around anymore, period,” ESPN analyst Paul Azinger said. “It will present a little bit of a challenge possibly at first, but once that tournament gets going, the Masters carries its own weight, and everybody will be fine.”
Being a dedicated golf fan is not as easy as it used to be. The easy story — chasing Woods — has been short-circuited. In its place is a Masters with an incomplete pyramid of possibilities, a broad base with no clear apex player. So many storylines to track this week. So many new faces to learn.
Even Augusta National chairman Billy Payne is on a voyage of discovery. “I’m still trying to run down the University of Georgia guy(s),” he said Wednesday. Of course the former Bulldog end was going to be interested in the two first-time players with UGA ties — Harris English and Chris Kirk.
It is not just the absence of Woods that makes this one of the more wide open of Masters; it also is the generation of players his success helped spawn, the ones who are now coming of age.
Just how wide open is a matter of wild conjecture. Defending champion Adam Scott guesstimated the number of serious contenders among the 97-man field at 20 or so.
“Yeah, I think if you’re outside the top 50 in the world this week, you’ve got a great chance. That’s kind of the way it has been,” Justin Rose joked. He was referring to the outbreak of newly minted champions on the PGA Tour. It’s like they are drawing straws out there, with 18 different winners in the past 21 events.
Phil Mickelson guessed conservatively, given that the forecast is for mild weather with no rain to slow greens that he said are “getting back to what I call Masters speed.”
“If the course plays firm and fast, I think you’re looking at less than a dozen. But if it doesn’t, I think you’re looking at almost half the field,” he said.
In Woods’ absence, the theme of this Masters shifts from one player to the herd. There is quantity in abundance, with the quality to be determined.
This Masters has a defending champion, Scott, who is a very real threat to become the fourth back-to-back winner.
It has the young player who was anointed the next galvanizing star, Rory McIlroy. He has wandered a bit, but is said to be back in the yoke and pulling earnestly toward fulfilling his potential.
It has more first-time entrants (24) than at any time since the first Masters in 1934. So many of them hit the ball out of sight and seem to have no apparent gag reflex that talk of one of them winning is not the heresy it used to be.
What this tournament lacks, and what golf faces with Woods in ebb tide, is a focal point. For the next great dominant player — someone to demand the attention of both the casual and dedicated golf fan — as did Woods, Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, Ben Hogan and Byron Nelson in their eras.
The game wants a dominant player: “There’s no way you can say any sport is better off without a dominant player,” Mark Steinberg, Woods’ agent, told the Palm Beach Post. “That brings out the rivalries, the underdogs — all the different storylines. Having that dominant player is an easy way to continue the surge in popularity.”
The game needs a dominant player: “I think most sports like seeing dominance, the extraordinary or the exceptional. We certainly got used to seeing that in golf,” Scott said.
Applications for golf’s next leading actor have been distributed among this field. Whether anyone begins the serious work of filling one out is uncertain. The process is even more taxing than getting a new Georgia driver’s license.
Three-time Masters champion Gary Player isn’t worried about the long-term future. “It’ll be somebody,” he said. “Somebody always comes along.”
And Payne, the overseer of the Masters, is confident in the short-term appeal of his event.
True, the Masters has been built upon the bones of legends, and Woods has constructed a powerful legacy, certainly worthy of his own plaque out here one day, if not his very own stone bridge.
When Woods is not at the Masters, it seems to be felt quite personally here. “That’s because he competes so well here, he loves it so much and the people love him,” Payne said. “It’s what you do in April — you watch Tiger Woods play the Masters.”
“But,” the chairman said, placing his faith in the dedicated fan of the game and the Masters brand, “we’ll be all right.”
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