By the time you will read this, most of the questions swirling about in my head as I write this column on the eve of the first day’s action at the Augusta Masters would have been answered. So you probably have a pretty good idea whether Tiger Woods has—as his former coach Hank Haney wrote this month in Golf Digest—the dreaded yips. No one, including Woods’ worst detractors would wish that upon him, and I hope Haney has been proved wrong. But I’m also wondering how Anirban Lahiri—who’s dropped a spot to 34th in the official world golf rankings after missing the cut at his last event on the PGA Tour earlier this month (Shell Houston Open)—will fare. And what about Rory Mc Ilroy? The Ulsterman has spent the last 74 weeks as the top-ranked player in the world and has won the last two Majors he teed it up at. That Mc Ilroy will contend is almost a given.
But for some unfathomable reason, I’m unable to dismiss Woods from the reckoning. Like most golf fans around the world, I still find it hard to forget the superhumanly feats, which one of the greatest golfers in the history of the game had got into the habit of pulling off repeatedly over the course of his career. The circumstances seem ominous, almost tailor-made for the Woods of yore. Here, the world, including past coaches, are murmuring in hushed tones about his yips (a neurological tic that leads to an unregulated twitching of the clubface)—after his chunked, flubbed and duffed chips and pitches in his last professional outing—and he comes back and nonchalantly wins the Masters by 10 shots. As all golfers know only too well, golf has a cruel way of humbling you just when you think you’ve conquered it. And there’s some solace in knowing that even the greats can face the same ordeal. Still, no other player, in these circumstances, would be even remotely considered a contender. Yet that’s the persona Woods has built and it defies rationale. All things considered, if Woods is in the field, then only a fool would rule him out.
But on a more positive note, it’s bound to be a momentous occasion for Lahiri to tee it up at his very first Masters tournament. It’s been a fairytale-like year for the Bengaluru lad: he’s gone from gaining his European Tour membership through a gruelling qualifying school to winning two tournaments in quick succession, and suddenly finds himself as the second-highest-ranked Indian player ever, and firmly in the elite pool of the top 50 players in the world. There’s something surreal about logging on to the rankings page and seeing Lahiri’s name above players like major-winner Louis Oosthuizen, Brandt Snedeker and Jason Dufner. These are the guys you watch on television, playing in big-money events on the biggest stage in the game—they seem to belong to a different realm. Lahiri must share some of that sense of disbelief, but he’s got every reason to feel he belongs amongst the best players in the world. His run began when he won the European Tour’s Maybank Malaysian Open earlier this year. Winning the tournament was big, but equally important, as he admitted in the post-event press conference, was playing with, and scoring better than, major-winner Lee Westwood. I can just imagine him thinking, “Hey, I can beat these guys!” Not only does Lahiri enter the Masters as the top-ranked player from the Asian Tour, he’s also ranked fourth on the European Tour. Can he go out and just win it? Now, that would be the biggest day for Indian golf.
A much more likely contender is a lean and mean McIlroy. The Irishman has been hitting the gym with a new and more rigorous physical regimen over the past few months and is looking fitter than he ever has. He’s also got demons to exorcise at Augusta from that disastrous meltdown in 2011 when he dropped seven strokes on the final 12 holes to lose the tournament. But if that memory bothers him then he has certainly not let that show. On the contrary, McIlroy has been amazingly positive about that mauling, terming it a… “big learning experience”, and crediting it for inspiring his next two major wins. With an attitude like that, and his unique combination of length and accuracy off the tee, he’s going to be fearless in his pursuit of his first Green Jacket. That win will also give him a career grand slam, something he says he’s dreamed of doing since his childhood.
But the real star of the show, as always, is likely to be Augusta National. For all his driving prowess, neither McIlroy, nor for that matter any other long hitter has been able to overpower the course, which demands canny course strategy and an otherworldly level of touch and finesse. The only natural advantage the course offers is to left-handed players since most shots need to be shaped right-to-left, giving southpaws who can hit a power fade an edge. It’s an advantage which reigning champion Bubba Watson has pressed home on two occasions—2012 and 2014. Watson hasn’t been at his best lately, but is still ranked fifth in the world—no small testament to the creative player’s improved consistency. Woods once remarked that Watson can hit shots that sometimes he (Woods) can’t even visualise—there’s very little the rest of the field can do to even compete with a guy like that if he gets going. It’s going to be one heck of a final round. I wouldn’t be surprised if I have to eat my words.
A golfer, Meraj Shah also writes about the game
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