Simply A Matter of Time

Forward steps

With due respect to Charl Schwartzel, the take home from Sunday afternoon is not his first and – you can be reasonably assured - only green jacket. The takeaway is this: Tiger Woods almost won the Masters.

Tiger Woods is, almost, back.

There is no other matter of significance – none more deserving of this space – and nothing else to cull from a Sunday afternoon in which, decked in that familiar blood red, Tiger erased a 7-stroke lead in nine holes, sending youngster Rory McIlroy shooting off like a dud bottlerocket into some forest on 10 and announcing to all: the rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated.

Tiger’s comet flamed out, yes, but he had a short putt on the Par-5 15 to take the outright lead on day four at Augusta, and – several holes earlier – my father and I in full-on wake-the-f*cking-neighbors mode. The list of people who could’ve evoked said reaction is a list of one.

Win or lose, a Sunday afternoon on CBS hasn’t been that exciting in a long while – and it wasn’t because of the four-way ties or Bill Macatee’s riveting post-round interviews.

The putts will drop at some point. The swing will find its rhythm. And the likes of McIlroy – an entire generation soon to be laid to waste – will kick themselves for not capitalizing on this fleeting opportunity to squelch a sleeping giant. At 35, Tiger Woods is much younger than his naysayers would have you believe and, should your lying eyes suggest otherwise, built like a mythical Greek warrior to boot.

In honesty, I had no great desire to peck away at a keyboard on this devastating (because I knew he’d win) weekend night. But I will not look like a fool for letting the 2011 Masters – the tipping point, as you will recall it – pass. A month from now, or six months from now, or a year from now, or whenever it is Tiger invariably finds his form, I’ll point you back to April 10 – the final round of this coulda-been fifth jacket – and say, simply, “told ya so.”

Only Tiger Woods could’ve done what Tiger Woods did on Sunday. Geoff Ogilvy and Adam Scott, among others, posted similar scores, but neither with the force of will or swell of significance. After all that’s passed, there is still no louder ovation in sport than the roar of a Tiger gallery.

As Tiger goes, golf goes, and at one point in the early afternoon, I asked my father rhetorically, “Do you realize we could be witnessing the recasting of history?” Something was said about a “grand slam” and something of “his greatest victory” and other things of similar Tiger-induced delirium. For a half hour we felt as Napoleon’s troops when their great leader marched back to Paris.

You will not remember Sunday, as some will suggest, as a moral victory. Tiger Woods once did golf better than anyone else did anything. There are no moral victories for men with fourteen major championships. Only steps in the unmistakably, inescapably, inevitably right direction.

Let’s also save the sappy redemption tale you can bet your life Jim Nantz is penning as we speak. Tiger is not about redemption. He is about perfection. About being the greatest ever.

I’ll stop short of guaranteeing both Opens and the PGA. But I will guarantee this: the Golden Bear sleeps uneasy tonight. And so, too, does a restless Tiger Woods, because there are better things in his future than fourth place at Augusta.

- Robbie