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Trevor Immelman double-bogeyed No. 16 Sunday, and the world threw up.
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| Tiger is far too talented to luck into a Masters win. The public won't buy that. (Getty Images) |
This is not Eldrick-bashing we engage in here. He is still everything his most fawning supporters say he is, and we have no quarrel with that, let alone evidence to contradict it.
We don't even have a problem with him playing as he did and still winning the tournament. The Masters is not the Buick Open, and you don't have to go 65-65-67-64 to win.
But in fairness, he did play a mediocre weekend's golf for him. Finishing second under those circumstances is actually about as close as you can get to winning without actually doing so.
That having been said, had Immelman blown his six-shot lead by having his head explode on 17 or 18, we would have known golf was no longer a competitive endeavor on the Woods level. It would have meant there was nothing left to do by the rest of the field, ever. It would have been a sign from God (or as he is known on majors weekends, Eldrick The First) that there is no longer a reason for anyone else to bother. It would prove that the cosmic fix is in, and that his powers extend beyond his own skills and scholarship.
And that news would kind of suck.
What makes Woods Woods is excellence -- jaw-dropping, soul-searing brilliance. Woods backing into a major is the sort of thing no right-thinking person could or should tolerate. Woods backing into a major because the leader shoots 18 on the final three holes means Arnold Rothstein is hard at work from whatever circle of hell is housing him.
And if Woods gets to win no matter how he plays, then we really have reached the point of no return with the whole damned game.
Immelman made this his tournament to win, but everyone watching kept looking over his shoulder waiting for Woods to appear, and he didn't. Everyone said he would, but he never did. His putter offended him, his short game gnawed at his innards, and blah-de-blah-de-blah. Stuff happens even to demigods, because that's what it says in the handbook.
But when Immelman cacked all over 16 by putting his tee shot in the water with Woods safely in the barn, people started thinking, "Na-a-a-a-hh. Couldn't be. No chance. Never. But what if ... ?"
Immelman, though, took his double like a man, and finished both upright and triumphant. Not even Woods got to daydream the impossible, and since he is the only with the cred to do so, the tournament was over.
And with it, golf was saved. Not from the spectre of Woods breaking Jack Nicklaus' majors record, or hitting 100 Tour wins, or anything like that. He'll probably get both of those, and he'll have earned them, and that is all to the good.
But our sense of Woods is that he is the idealized man, and idealized men don't win titles by watching the leader eat a mouthful of gelignite and blow himself to smithereens. In winning, he would made people go, "Eeeuuuuuwww," rather than "aaaahhhhhhh," and Woods should never win a major while firing his clubs into the trunk of his courtesy car.
Nobody should, really, but especially not him.
So here's to Trevor Immelman, who earned what he got and in doing so, saw to it Tiger Woods did not get what he hadn't earned. And that's OK, because we don't want to get to the point where Woods has to win 20 majors to win 19 that people accept.
Besides, there is nothing quite like the scene of an angry Woods at the U.S. Open, or the British, or the PGA. Him losing The Masters makes it better when he stands on the first tee at Torrey Pines this June and screaming to the sky, "I will not abide mediocrity! I shall not accede to second place! Bring me the head of Trevor Immelman!"
That's a visual worth the YouTube space right there.
