re: The 2018 Masters Tournament - Patrick Reed Wins First Major

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Also the switch of showing the front 9 live was the beginning of changing the mystique

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That’s the backdrop for the present day incredulity about what we’re watching and hype about what could be next. Pick your pundit: Jim Nantz, Nick Faldo, any writer who has covered the game for decades. The consensus is we arrive at the 2018 Masters with the opportunity, a realistic one, to see one of the greatest sports stories of all time and the greatest comeback of all time. These are subjective things, but however you want to define or measure it, we’re within range of something special happening. That such an opportunity even exists is a gift.

Tiger has come back to public golf this year in a way no one, not even Tiger, could have expected given the damage, some self-inflicted, of recent years. It’s impossible to disentangle Tiger from the public history the world now has with him. That’s why you’ll read, hear, and see throughout Masters week all manner of pop pysch theories on why he’s playing well or why someone still has doubts. But the golf, the actual shots on the course, is there again.

Tiger has the power and speed that should not be possible for a 42-year-old who has had four back surgeries and multiple knee surgeries. Even he doesn’t know how he’s registering some of the fastest clubhead and ball speeds measured on the PGA Tour. “I don’t know, it just, it just happened” he said last month. The numbers are not just back to competitive, but they’re the very best. The drives are going 350 and 360 yards. Some of them are the longest out of the entire field for entire tournaments. It is the most conspicuous way to illustrate that this comeback is different.

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Beyond the bombs off the tee, this comeback has also seen more reliable putting, precise ballstriking, and the best vintage of short games. We’re nowhere near that yippy stuff we saw leading into his last Masters start. Tiger is executing short game shots from all types of lies and with all types of styles. He’s taking on everything from low spinners to flops, and showing a touch we thought left him four years ago. Tiger, who for the first time in years has enough rounds to now qualify for the PGA Tour’s statistics rankings, is seventh in strokes gained around-the-green. It’s an astonishing reversal from where we were at his last Masters start.

The glue of Tiger’s game, the area that made him arguably the GOAT, is the ballstriking with his irons. He is hailed as the greatest iron player of all time. Tiger is moving the ball in both directions and hitting every kind of shot on approaches. At Riviera, his one missed cut this year, Tiger lamented, “One of my hallmarks of my whole career is I’ve always hit the ball pin high with my iron shots, and I have not done that.” A lot of pros would take hitting the ball pin-high for a week, or half a tournament. That precision returned and stayed with him in Florida. He’s now 15th on the Tour in strokes gained approaching-the-green. His precision wit the irons will be a significant advantage at Augusta, where that’s required.

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The driver, while fast and long, remains as wild as ever. There’s no great penal rough at Augusta National, but that inconsistency will haunt him standing over at least a few tee balls. The big hitters have an accentuated advantage at Augusta, as they do at many venues in this era of golf. But it doesn’t help if you can’t keep it in play and Tiger will have to find some middling confidence on a few of those critical driver plays.

Despite the wild driver, which is his one remaining weakness, Tiger is eighth on the PGA Tour in strokes gained total. This bears repeating: He is in the top 10! The bombs off the tee may be the most conspicuous way to illustrate how this comeback looks different. The stats are a measurable way and tell the story, substantively, of a player competing at the highest level and ready to win.

The results corroborate we’re watching a real comeback, but the aesthetics are what draw us in from the start. There’s juice, swag, pep, joie de vivre in the way Tiger is playing again. He’s twirling the club and violently pulling his tee out of the ground after his follow through. He’s walking after the ball when it’s still in the air. He’s fist pumping. There’s aggression in the plays he’s attempting and now executing more often.

Paul Azinger, a former major winner and one of the best analysts in sports, lamented how Tiger had lost the feel that made him the greatest shotmaker the game has ever seen. The line Azinger used so often over the last five or six years was “the artist became an engineer.” Tiger is now without a coach, going it alone for really the first time in his career. He has always had the technical knowledge to coach himself and adjust his own swing. He has the greatest golf brain of all time and the enthusiasm to actually to get in the muck on every detail.

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the sauna

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