Masters Memories

Tiger: The Awakening
The score-line of 40-30 smacked of Wimbledon rather than the Masters but that was how the then 21-year-old Tiger Woods compiled his first-round 70 in 1997. To this correspondent at least, that year’s event would become the most riveting Masters of modern times.
When it came to the Saturday evening and the American had a nine-stroke lead, his fellow competitors were in shock, with Colin Montgomerie among the more hard-hit victims.
Though the Scot had amassed a 74 as against Tiger’s 65 to let Costantino Rocco take over his second place, he did not begin to do his usual thing of walking off in a huff. Instead, he strode determinedly to the media centre.
As it turned out, he came more as prophet than player and could not wait to make his predictions. “Tiger,” he said, “will not only win but he’ll win by more than nine shots.”
“How can you be so sure?” chorused the writers.
“Because,” he answered, “Tiger is not Greg Norman and Rocca is not Faldo.” That, of course, was a reference to how Norman had been six shots ahead of Faldo going into the last round the year before but ended up taking the kind of hiding which will haunt him for the rest of his days. Tiger won by a mind-boggling 12 shots in ‘97 and, as Montgomerie so
rightly said, on this occasion the entire field was humiliated to the core. It was a glorious beginning to Woods’ major-winning career but the success which followed did not come on its own. Rather was it accompanied by a build-up of pressure which, looking back, maybe rendered it more than somewhat surprising
that he did not hit the buffers – or that fire hydrant – sooner than he did.