I couldn’t disagree more with that. The green jacket is earned when a player wins The Masters. That’s what Immelman did. For me, The Masters is all about the underdog and the amateur. None of the other majors even matter by comparison.
May be, it was one of the worst fourth rounds ever, but only because it wasn’t a chase. It’s not a Sunday only tournament; Immelman won it Thursday through Saturday. The only golf I pay any attention to was hardly keeping me riveted to my chair, but y’know, if someone wins the Masters by 3 strokes over Tiger, well, he’s earned it. Some guy named Miguel Angel Jiminez shot a 4 under today; had Tiger done that, he’d have won. He didn’t. Such is life.
You don’t play three consecutive rounds at Augusta with scores in the 60s because you’re lucky.
The only thing that made the Masters a dud is that Immelman was so damned good all weekend it took the suspense out of Sunday.
Bah…Immelman will be out of golf within two years. I don’t know how even managed to sneak into Augusta in the first place. he must have stolen someone else’s card or something.
He was invited to play.
That and he was one of the 50 leaders on the Final Official World Golf Ranking for 2007.
I know. I was being facetious. I’m just disappointed at the dearth of name players in contention on sunday. Even Tiger was never really in contention, and Lefty spit the bit again.
When it is windy or in bad weather, the Masters turns into a putting contest and Tiger just didn’t have the putter working. Same thing happened last year, although Zach Johnson and Trevoe Immelman are both excellent golfers.
Veterans with knowledge of Augusta National know where to put the ball on approach shots to make the greens undulations work for them, but windy conditions mean you can’t place the ball with that sort of accuracy.
One final thought- MAYBE, just maybe, we can lay to rest the idea that other pros are going to fall aprat down the stretch, because they’re so afraid Tiger is lurking.
Trevor Immelman didn’t sweat it.
Angel Cabrera didn’t sweat it.
Zac Johnson didn’t sweat it.
Rich Beem didn’t sweat it.
Look, Tiger is OBVIOUSLY the best golfer in the world by far, and when he’s at the top of his game, every competitor knows there’s no chance of beating him. Every other player goes into a tournament knowing, “If Tiger is firing on all cylinders, my best game won’t be good enough.”
But the record shows, Tiger almost never makes big comebacks. If he’s trailing big on Sunday morning, he is NOT likely to catch up enough to win, and the guys ahead of him are NOT likely to melt down and let him win by default.
The generation of elite players a bit older than Lefty is quickly fading (Jose Maria Olazabal, Ernie Els, Vijay, even Goosen), but I dunno who is going to take their place. Immelman may turn out to be one of the best of the guys currently in their 20’s, maybe not. I do wish that someone would do to Tiger what Tom Watson did to Jack, even tho I hated the little bastard each time he beat Nicklaus-but it was exciting: two players going head to head at the very pinnacle of their games.
I agree with all that. Tiger has occasionally made big comebacks on sundays but not in a Major. I do think that, for a while anyway, there was (and maybe still is) a tendency for the other players to come apart if Tiger is tied with them or leading on sunday, but I’m not convinced that’s a result of choking so much as trying to press and go for shots they ordinarily wouldn’t go for. I think they feel like they have to go for every flag if they want to win and that disasters just naturally occur.
I was very glad to see Trevor win it. At some point in the Sat coverage I actually yelled at the announcers, “Why don’t you just give Tiger a blow jobs already!”
Immelman drove the ball beautifully all weekend. This major may be what it takes to really move him into the top echelon.
Hope to see big things from Snedeker in the future as well. Couldn’t believe when he dumped it in the creek for the 2d day in a row.
That course - especially the greens - have such ridiculously small margins for error. It seems weird to me that the golfers all speak about it so reverently, but when they toughen up a US Open, they all bitch. I don’t know, but some of those greens with shaved fringe leading to water seemed as “unfair” as anything I’ve seen at an Open.
Why the hell a guy playing golf more than 40 hours a week and playing his whole life can not hit a fairway ,I don’t get. It is not that hard.
Heh.
P.S. Anyone following what Lorena Ochoa is doing to the LPGA tour? Tiger’s got nothing on her. Four wins this year, including the last three and the first Major. She isn’t just winning, either, she’s obliterating the field. She’s won two events by 11 strokes, one by seven, and one by five.
She qualified for the Hall of Fame in just her fifth year on tour, the youngest ever to do so. She’s got 21 wins on tour, including 18 in the last 2 1/4 years.
Well, they’re often driving it a lot further than the average golfer would, and using tricky techniques to move the ball toward the green (intentionally hooking or slicing), so any slight flaw is greatly magnified. Plus there’s this phenomenon called “wind” in which the air moves, and takes the ball with it.
It is hard for the average hacker to appreciate “working the ball” like the pros do. I understand they do it to get whatever advantage they can. Generally the landing spots are as “relatively” tight as their targets on the greens. To get a relatively flat lie with the best angle on the green may require that you work the ball one way or the other. But as a hacker, it seems as tho at times they get into more trouble working the ball than if they hit it straight. For example, when Lefty yanked it out to the right on 16 on Saturday, it didn’t come back and he ended up in the sand, and got a double bogey. Or else he might “overcook” it, and have it travel too far and into the water.
The landing areas are VERY narrow - far narrower than anything we hackers play. I played Olympia Fields when they were setting it up for the Open. It was very interesting to see how they were tweaking the course. They moved a TON of sod, swapping rough for fairway to tighten the landing areas. What was crazy was that they were taking rough from the areas ~250 yds off the tee, and replacing it with fairway ~300+ off the tee. So we mere mortals benefitted from what they were doing to trip up the pros. BTW - the pros completely ripped the course up - with an ample assist from considerable rain.
Last year I played with a kid who had been #1 on his college team. I think he shot 1 or 2 over - I remember he was even on the back. I have never played with someone who worked the ball as much as he. It really was impressive, the way the holes opened up and played differently when he worked the ball left or right. He’d say something like, “I’m going to draw this one really hard,” and line up aiming way over in the trees. Different from any game I’m ever going to be able to play!