Loose Impediments

Tough Road Ahead for Tiger

Tiger Woods has taken us on quite a journey during the past 10-plus years. The entire time, his North Star has been Jack Nicklaus' mark of 18 major victories. 

At first, the record seemed impossible to break. Then it seemed like a foregone conclusion. Now, with 14 majors, he has passed a crucial marker, one at which the climb gets much steeper for most golfers. 

It has been 12 years since Tiger's first major victory at the 1997 Masters, and despite golfers' reputations for longevity (see Tom Watson's performance at the British Open), it has proven to be very difficult for most players to win majors consistently after passing the 12-year anniversary of their first major win.

The fact is, as in other sports, golfers have fairly short windows of greatness. Arnold Palmer won his seven majors in a six-year span. Ben Hogan won his majors in seven years, and Byron Nelson and Tom Watson won their majors over eight years. Seve Ballesteros and Nick Faldo both had their peaks in less than a decade. Even the paragon of longevity, Sam Snead, won his last major 12 years after winning his first.

Only seven players have won multiple majors after crossing the 12-year threshold, which is exactly where Tiger stands now. The outlier is Nicklaus, who won six majors after his 12th year and had the longest span (24 years) between his first and last major wins. (See the list below for more.)

Still One of the Best

For four days and 71 holes, the drama at the 2009 British Open built perfectly. As if on cue, golf's leading men and potential spoilers exited the stage in succession: Phil Mickelson before the tournament, Tiger Woods on Friday, Steve Marino on Saturday and on Sunday, Ross Fisher with a quad on the 5th, Matthew Goggin with three consecutive bogeys from the 14th through 16th hole and Lee Westwood with back-to-back bogeys on the 15th and 16th.

That left Tom Watson to finish out what would have been the greatest golf tournament in history. But while the alternate ending was heartbreaking, it shouldn't diminish what Watson accomplished in what will be his next-to-last British Open, unless the R&A changes the rules and lets him play past the age of 60.

As sports psychologists like to point out, it's about the process, not the outcome. And the process, like watching a real-life "Field of Dreams," was what enthralled the golf world for four days and still makes the 2009 British Open one of the greatest golf tournaments ever played.

As we recover from the tremendous buildup and the astonishing turn of events of the tournament's final hour, here is my first stab at placing the event among the 10 greatest British Opens ever played. The list after the jump.

10 Best Shots in Masters History

Great shots are what make for great tournaments. In the 75-year history of the Masters, there have been numerous shots worthy of the first major of the year. Here is a list of the 10 best shots in Masters history, excluding putts.

1. Gene Sarazen
Year: 1935
Hole: 15th
Round: Fourth
The "shot heard 'round the world," Sarazen's double eagle with a 4-wood from 220 yards erased Craig Woods' deficit. The next day, Sarazen defeated Wood in a 36-hole playoff, and the shot helped elevate the Masters' status in the golf world.

10 Worst Shots in Masters History

The Masters isn't always about great shots and the accompanying roars. Augusta National easily can expose the flaws of even the best players in the world, and sometimes the spectators' groans can reverberate through the pines.

Here is a list of the 10 worst shots in Masters history.

1. Scott Hoch
Year: 1989
Hole: 10th
Round: Playoff
Hoch's par putt on the first playoff hole would have won him the 1989 Masters. Instead, his miss extended his playoff with Nick Faldo, who made birdie on the next hole to win the first of his three green jackets.

10 Best Rounds in Masters History

Negotiating a single round at Augusta National demands everything from long, straight drives to precise distance control to an imaginative short game to unwavering concentration. Add to that the pressure and atmosphere of the Masters, and it's amazing that the competitors can pull the trigger on any single shot, much less put together mind-blowing rounds that have been immortalized in the game's long, rich history.

Of all the great rounds in Masters history, here are the 10 best.

1. Jack Nicklaus
Year: 1986
Score: 65, final round
After a ho-hum front nine, the 46-year-old Nicklaus found another gear on the back nine. He made five birdies and an eagle, including the stretch from holes 15 to 17 where he went eagle-birdie-birdie to take the lead.

Best Players without a Green Jacket

The U.S. Open has Sam Snead and Nick Faldo. The British Open has Byron Nelson, while the PGA Championship can claim Arnold Palmer and Tom Watson.

While the other three majors can claim one of the all-time greats among those who have failed to win that event, the Masters' biggest victim isn't quite an undisputed legend, which speaks to the quality of the course and the event. (Of course, we're not counting players like Harry Vardon, Walter Hagen and Bobby Jones, whose primes preceded the Masters, which began in 1934.)

This week, in addition to Tiger and Phil, the focus will be on Greg Norman and Padraig Harrington, both of whom are on the following list of the 10 best players to have never won the Masters. This ranking kicks off an entire week of Masters lists, which will be posted on the following days:

Tuesday: 10 dark horse picks
Wednesday: 10 best Masters
Thursday: 10 best rounds in Masters history
Friday: Ranking Augusta National's holes
Saturday: 10 worst shots in Masters history
Sunday: 10 best shots in Masters history

While this is Norman's last opportunity to take his name off this list, other players, like Harrington and Ernie Els, have several chances remaining.

"I Don't Like Mondays"

Dustin Johnson is a happy man. The cancellation of today's final round of the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am gave Johnson a three-round win, his second on the PGA Tour.

My guess is the only people at Pebble whose happiness level ranks up there with Johnson's are the press, who were spared the stresses and aggravations of a Monday finish like the one that took place at the 2000 AT&T.

In that year's weather-delayed event, Matt Gogel led on Monday morning by one shot over Vijay Singh and by five over Tiger Woods, who was going for his sixth consecutive win. As the golf writer for the Orlando Sentinel, I was chronicling the historic run by our biggest hometown golfer. His streak had gotten me to Hawaii and now Pebble, so I wasn't complaining too much about the Monday finish, a phrase that usually strikes the same chord in golf writers as do the words "emergency dental procedure."

Originally, I had planned on spending Monday in San Francisco, where my sister lived, before flying out Tuesday morning. The weather precipitated a change of plans, but after my initial disappointment, I was looking ahead to salvaging part of the day, especially after Gogel built a seven-stroke lead over Tiger with seven holes remaining. I was already planning a tidily written story about the end of the streak, and imagined myself in San Francisco in time for a relaxing dinner.

Apparently, I had forgotten to inform Gogel and Tiger of my plans. Gogel made a couple of bogeys, Tiger a couple of birdies, and as he stood over his second shot on the 15th hole, Tiger was four shots back.

I was having lunch with Alan Shipnuck of Sports Illustrated, Craig Bestrom of the San Jose Mercury News and T.R. Reinman of the San Diego Union-Tribune while watching on the monitor. We saw Tiger's wedge shot land to the right of the flagstick before spinning into the hole. When they say there's no cheering in the press room, they're right. There was grim silence as we all got up—meal unfinished—and headed for our laptops. At that point, none of us had any doubts Tiger would win, and the stories we had concocted in our heads were useless. Instead, we were all facing the same long day of chronicling yet another incredible feat by Tiger.

I not only had to write the game story, but had to put the whole thing in perspective for A1, the newspaper's front page. Later, I found out that there was an outcry back in Orlando because the CBS affiliate had not shown the tournament (opting for the usual fare of soap operas), which meant my front-page article carried added significance, a fact that I was glad not to have known at the time because I no doubt would have choked the way I did during my first chance at an A1 article—Payne Stewart's plane accident.

I finally got to my sister's at nearly midnight and instead of flying home, I spent the next day in her apartment writing a three-part feature on Tiger before heading down to Torrey Pines for the next event, where a media circus of hundreds chasing Tiger's streak descended on a space meant for a couple dozen.

Mercifully, Phil Mickelson won, and I was finally able to go home. But whenever I hear about a Monday finish, I can't help but flash to one of the longest days of my life.

This List? It Was a Shoe-In

As a teenager, I worked at my dad's sneaker store, so by osmosis, I became pretty familiar with shoes. (As well as, unfortunately, dirty socks of all kinds. This was in the days when salespeople actually found the shoes for you and helped you put them on instead of leaving you to forage through piles of boxes. I am just an outsider in the shoe business now, but isn't this current system actually more work for the staff, who now have to tidy up the strewn boxes at the end of the day? On the other hand, they no longer have to be exposed to dirty socks, so I guess it's a push. What I really didn't comprehend was how people couldn't muster the effort to put on clean socks, especially when they knew they were going shoe-shopping. You would imagine this would apply mostly to kids, but a surprising number of adults were also guilty.)

The best part of the job was that I was always the first kid in school with the cool new pair of sneakers like the first Air Jordans. (This status sort of made up for all the Al Bundy jokes I had to endure. My favorite was the Nike Terminators, a pair of which I still have somewhere and used to break out every once in a while. They were always conversation starters, but now that Nike and others picked up on the retro appeal and have reissued the Terminator and other classics, I feel the appeal has been cheapened.

I bring up this backstory because unless you've been Rod Blagojevich's lawyer or have had the misfortune to have entrusted Bernard Madoff with your or your charity's money, footwear has been a major topic of conversation in the past week. In fact, shoes have never been discussed this much unless you were a Sex and the City cultist fan.

I am talking, of course, of Muntader al-Zeidi, the Iraqi journalist who threw his size 10s at President George W. Bush during a press conference.

Continuing this theme of notable footwear, you'll find nine other famous and infamous shoes throughout history in addition to al-Zeidi's after the jump. (Don't worry, there are some golf shoes on the list.) Why did I compile this list? You could say the subject runs through my sole.

Golf and the Olympics

In one way, golf and the Olympic Games—the ancient version anyway—have a quality in common. Our invocation of the golf gods mirrors the belief the Greeks placed in the deities who lived atop Mount Olympus.

Alas, there is scant intersection between the modern Olympic movement and golf, which was last an Olympic sport during the 1904 Games in St. Louis.

Then there is the fascinating tale of a trophy currently on display at the British Golf Museum in St. Andrews: the Golf Prize of the Nations, which was given to the winner of post-1936 Olympics golf tournament hosted by Adolf Hitler. In his latest column, George Peper recounts the event held at the resort town of Baden-Baden.

After the morning of the second day Germany was still ahead, now by three strokes over England.

At that point, high-ranking diplomat Joachim von Ribbentrop, who had been watching the action, contacted his boss and said there would be a German victory. Elated, Hitler summoned his chauffeur and set out for Baden-Baden to present the trophy himself.

But the English pair—Tommy Thirsk and Arnold Bentley—had other ideas. Thirsk, a tenacious Yorkshireman, had posted a course-record 65 in the morning and he matched it in the afternoon, vaulting his team to a four-stroke victory over France, as the Germans slumped to third place, 12 strokes behind.

Sensing the grim inevitability of the result, a red-faced von Ribbentrop raced off by car and intercepted the Hitlermobile. When he heard the news, the Führer was furious—he made an about face and headed back to Berlin.

In the spirit of those forerunners, there is a movement to add golf to the Olympics in 2016, and a delegation led by the PGA Tour's Ty Votaw and the R&A's Peter Dawson made what appears to be a convincing presentation at IOC headquarters in Switzerland. 

Big Mac Attack

 

It's a bit unfair, really, for one resort to have three courses like Bandon Dunes, Pacific Dunes and Bandon Trails. And now, Tom Doak and Jim Urbina, the masterminds behind Pacific Dunes, the consensus No. 1 at the resort (or pretty much anywhere else), are hard at work on the fourth. It's called Old Macdonald, which seemed a bit gimmicky when I first learned of the name almost two years ago, but I find that the more I see it in print, hear it and say it myself, the more I am getting used to it—not unlike "Barry Bonds, all-time home run leader."

First, a little history: "Old Mac" is a tribute to American golf pioneer Charles Blair Macdonald, who designed the first great American course, Long Island's National Golf Links, a favorite of Bandon owner Mike Keiser. National was an adaptation of some of the best holes found in Great Britain and continental Europe, and Doak and Urbina (Doak's longtime in-house architect who finally is getting his name on the marquee, a long-overdue honor) have used these "template" holes as the basis for Old Madonald's design.