Just as a casual stroll on the fields of Antietam where the bloodiest day of slaughter in American warfare was fought, one can hardly imagine the intensity of competition against the pastoral beauty of the Augusta National Golf Club when the Masters Tournament winds down the final stretch as the world’s top golfers seek the privilege to borrow the green jacket for the following year. In the lush Georgia pines the voices of golf’s greatest whisper wisdom to those on today’s field of battle. Beginning with Horton Smith, winner of the first tournament in 1934 followed by legends of the sport: Gene Sarazen, Byron Nelson, Ben Hogan, and Sam Snead, the PGA tour became one of the world’s most prestigious and extensively covered sports in the 1960’s when Arnold Palmer, Gary Player and then Jack Nicklaus, the “golden bear,” dominated the historic event.
Through the 1970’s and 80’s into the 1990’s, dreams of capturing Jack Nicklaus’s glory would go unfulfilled as Nicklaus would win again in 1972, 1975, and for a final bow in 1986, golfers like Nick Faldo and Ben Crenshaw would become champions among sports’ elites for their repeated triumphs in the spring time splendor deep in the Georgia woods.
Who would suspect on the eve of the Masters in 1997, the whole world of sports was about to give birth to a legend who could likely sit at the same table as Babe Ruth, Michael Jordan, Richard Petty, Johnny Unitas, and Wayne Gretske as the legendary face of their respective sports?
Tiger Woods shot his way to win the 1997 Masters suddenly making golf hip and liberating it from being perceived as an exclusive club for white boys only. As Woods became the sports most dominant figure, he never talked politics, never made speeches about what it meant for a citizen considered Black to open up such a lily white sport. He simply was glad to be considered an American and to look at Tiger Woods’ family tree, he is the son of an Asian-American mother and a father with American Indian, European and African lineage. Woods has since won three more Masters and has been in the hunt for more becoming a one man marketing sensation perhaps only rivaled by Michael Jordan in his prime.
This year, the dynamic duo of Tiger Woods and, Phil Mickelson, his most significant competitor for the green jacket would not be in the final march for victory only finishing among the top ten with Mickelson finishing in sole possession of 5th place and Woods in a four-way tie for 6th, but what would define the chase for victory provided a high drama finish almost unprecedented in PGA tour history.
At the conclusion of regular play, three golfers would move on to contest being tied after four days of golf as Chad Campbell, -3 for today’s action, Angel Cabrera, -1, and Cinderella story, Kenny Perry never finishing better than 12th in the Masters losing a sudden death playoff for one chance at a major win in the 1996 PGA, face the intense pressure of all eyes of the patrons watching to gain just a one shot lead on their adversaries.
Chad Campbell would be the first to fall, and then there were two. Finally, even knocking a ball off a tree in the playoff, Argentinean Angel Cabrera would survive to the 2009 Masters winner. Welcome to one of the most exclusive fraternities in sports as last year’s winner, Trevor Immelman surrenders the coat worn so proudly by the legends of golf.
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