Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Blazing the Tiger Trail


Blazing the Tiger Trail

“. . . I am as certain as that the sun shines in the East come morning, that a rehabilitated (and forgiven) Tiger Woods is infinitely a more valuable asset to humanity than a fallen, disgraced, and damaged colossus of much more than just golf.”


The concluding paragraph of chapter 27 (pp.299 ff) of the cited opus, the above excerpts was also cited in an earlier post on this site.  It behooves revisiting on the occasion of the 77th Masters Tournament.  Firstly because Augusta was the first major tournament he won.  And secondly, because it is the major tournament he has not won for the longest time.

Thanks to a spectacular final round of 63 at the Valero Texas Open, Martin Laird of Scotland broke the streak of Americans winning 2013 PGA-Tour tournaments at fourteen straight.  Arguably, the 14-trounament winning streak represented a quasi-resurgence of the prowess of American golf spearheaded by Tiger Woods himself.  He is the only multiple winner this season and his resurgence has been built on restructuring and strengthening the foundations of his game.

Based on the pattern established so far this year, I prognosticate that Tiger is going to tie Sam Snead’s record at the British Open in Muirfield on July21.  He goes on to surpass Snead’s 82 wins and tie Jack Nicklaus’ 18 majors in Rochester, NY’s Oak Hill Country Club on August 11.  This follows from the simple, and admittedly fantastic, reckoning that Tiger is going to defend all three titles he won in 2012 and win all four majors in 2013.

Indeed, it is a tall order.  But I was not the one who ordered it.  Tiger himself designed his unprecedented race with history.  He will finish off the season with two more wins to capture his third FedEx Cup.  These are the Deutsche Bank Championship at the TPC Boston on September 2 and the Tour Championship by CocaCola at East Lake on September 22.

This history making ways will persist through the off season.  Regardless of his schedule in 2014 he will go on to break Jack’s 18 major wins at the 78th Masters.  He shall have garnered 19 major victories and establish himself as the only player to have defended the Masters Trophy twice.

Being mere figments of my fertile imagination, none of these may come to pass.  But if it does, and there is no compelling reason that it should not, just remember that you heard it here first.  And I don’t even have a crystal ball.