By STEVE HUMMER - The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
AUGUSTA - The parade, as all-American as any on the Fourth of July, had assembled outside the main gate of Augusta National, ready to march up Magnolia Lane.
Break out the Sousa sheet music. Drape a little red, white and blue bunting over the clubhouse railings. The home team had won 14 consecutive PGA Tour events to start this season. With Masters week now here, American golf, led by a re-energized Tiger Woods, was feeling as flush as it had in years.
“I’m excited. It’s great to see us get off to the kind of start we have,” said Brandt Snedeker, who seemed to cue the domination at the end of the 2012 season by winning the Tour Championship at East Lake. “It will be interesting to see if we can maintain it. It’s been an unbelievable start for the Americans. That many young guys winning, that many guys who wouldn’t have before, now closing the deal.”
Yes, it wasn’t just the old hands like Woods and Phil Mickelson who were holding up the big novelty checks at the end. First-timers like Russell Henley, John Merrick, Michael Thompson and Kevin Streelman were breaking through. There was a generation of domestic players calling, “Next!”
Then on Sunday, Martin Laird scotched the streak. Hailing from golf’s home office, the Glasgow-born Laird won the last event before the Masters, the first foreign-born player to win on Tour this year at the Texas Open. A real momentum killer, that Laird.
Whether the Americans can begin another streak here this weekend is very much up in the pollen-clotted air.
For one, they are outnumbered. The Masters is on a crusade to spread golf around the globe and if that means raiding eighth-grade classes in China to accomplish that, so be it. (Fourteen-year-old Tianlang Guan will be the youngest Masters competitor ever). In a relatively small Masters field of 94, 51 players are foreign born.
It is sometimes difficult to build up a decent us-vs.-them fervor in a game where the professionals are divided only by the question of whether to live in Florida or Arizona.
“Most of what we call foreigners live in the U.S.,” said the defending Masters champion with the most American of names, Bubba Watson. “They play on our Tour. So when we look out on the first tee, I don’t look and say, ‘Oh, that’s Tiger Woods, the American.’ I say, ‘That’s Tiger Woods, the greatest that’s ever played.’
“I don’t care where they’re from. And the foreigners don’t care where I’m from. They think I’m foreign because I’m from Bagdad (Fla.).”
And there is a cyclical nature to the leaderboard. It was only a couple years ago — a period coinciding with Woods’ disappearance from the world’s No. 1 ranking — that the question being asked was: Does anyone still play golf in America anymore?
“I think it just ebbs and flows,” said ESPN analyst and two-time U.S. Open champion Andy North. “There’s some good young American players who have stepped up and played well. And it does help when Tiger wins three of them. That changes the dynamics. And Phil got his (at the Phoenix Open). You go back two years, neither one of them won.”
Still, the domestic golf community must take whatever opportunity it has to brag. Woods is back on top now and he has some company. Half the world’s top 10 and top 20 players are from the U.S. Results from the PGA Tour this year certainly haven’t damaged national pride in America’s ability to save par.
Of the latest crop of U.S. players, four-time Tour winner Brian Gay said, “You see guys come out that are not afraid anymore. Guys are doing it faster, sooner, younger. That’s the biggest difference.”
The business of defending American golf really begins this week. Frankly you can win all the Waste Management Opens and John Deere Classics you want and it won’t make an impression on the world stage. It is at the Masters, where you can’t tell the players without a world almanac, and at the other three majors where real trends are made.
On the PGA Tour the previous five years, even before the long U.S. winning streak of this season, American players won 64 percent of the events. In the majors between 2008-12, that number dipped to only 35 percent.
As much as any event this side of the Ryder Cup, the Masters is the right time and place to play the xenophobia card.
Experts will warn you that the American domination on Tour this year means little coming into this Masters.
England’s Justin Rose was getting much respect in the tournament build-up. “I think he’s got an enormous amount of game,” North said. “He has some length. He has some maturity. There aren’t any real weaknesses in his game and I think his time is coming.”
Northern Ireland’s Rory McIlroy appeared to get his wandering game squared away with a second-place showing in Texas on Sunday.
Loser in the playoff last year to Watson, South Africa’s Louis Oosthuizen has returned with a swing that is a combination of maple syrup and smooth jazz.
“We make such a big thing about where are you from, but it’s a world game now as we know and there are great teachers all over the world and there are great athletes all over the world playing this game,” said Curtis Strange, another former U.S. Open winner manning the mike for ESPN. “They could show up from anywhere in a day’s time.”
One waves flags here at one’s own risk.
