AUGUSTA, Ga. — You da Immelman!
Trevor Immelman won the Masters, and the golf season ended Sunday. Wait ’til 2009.
Tiger Woods will not win the Grand Slam this year, so what do we have to look forward to — the FedEx Cup; the Barclays Bank, the Deutsche Bank and the U.S. Bank championships; the John Deere Classic; and the Wichita Muni Member-Guest & Fish Fry? Even The International is gone. It will be a long, hot summer.
Oh, Tiger can win the U.S. and British Opens and maybe the PGA Championship, but the thing just won’t have that swing. Been there, seen him do that. We wanted the Great Slamarino — all four in 2008. He had teased with the possibility.
Immelman is a good player and a good story and a good man. Although his knees buckled near the finish, Immelman withstood the challenges and stood up to the wind, and finished first at the Masters.
He should have been presented afterward with a silver platter, because that’s what the tournament victory was served on.
Man shot a 75.
Tiger ended up second. To repeat, Tiger ended up second. How could it be — especially to anyone who quit watching the Masters on Sunday when Immelman was 10-under par and Tiger was six shots behind and missed another putt?
Tiger ended up second because everybody who had been in front of him all weekend — from Brandt Snedeker to Steve Flesch to Paul Casey to Phil Mickelson to the guys who raked the bunkers and drove the lawn mowers — dissolved or dispersed.
For instance, Casey went from 7-under to 7-over before you could say “Mighty Casey Struck Out.” Flesch was 8-under at 11, 2-under at 18. This wasn’t a Flesch wound. Snedeker could be a new verb in the dictionary: “Boy, he totally snedekered when he hit his ball in the creek again.”
There was nothing else, though, like the lethargy and inertia of Tiger Woods at the Masters.
He didn’t make a putt all week until the 11th hole on Sunday.
Then, on the 18th, he rolled in a birdie and didn’t do a fist-pump, but swept his hand as if to say: “Give me a break. Where’s that putt been, and why’d you show up now?”
Tiger began the final round trailing by six strokes, but this is Augusta, and no lead is secure. With Augusty winds whirling and twirling on the grounds, playing conditions would be extreme. Tiger knew that the four players leading, without a major among them, would be blown about by the wind.
A nation tuned in to see if Tiger could pull off an incredible comeback.
After all, he had said at the beginning of this year that the Grand Slam — victories in the four majors (Masters, U.S. Open, British Open and PGA Championship) — was a feat that could be accomplished this year because he had been bringing his “A-plus” game to the courses since last year, was winning practically every tournament he touched and because he had found life (especially his new daughter) to be beautiful. And the majors would be contested on courses, of course, that he loves.
He opened Thursday with a pedestrian 72, went one stroke better Friday and threw a 4-under at Augusta on Saturday.
Tiger was in position Sunday if he could post a 66 or 67. “I’m very much in it,” he said before the round.
He didn’t need such a low number. A 69 would have been satisfactory enough to force a playoff, and a 68, duplicating Saturday, would have won the Masters outright.
However, Woods bogeyed the fourth hole. He got the shot back on the sixth, but his level-par 36 on the front nine was not forcing Immelman, who had admitted he would be watching Tiger’s score on the leaderboard, to panic.
When Tiger converted a birdie putt, seemingly from South Carolina, on the 11th hole, Augusta National began to shake. And when Immelman slipped to minus-9 on the 12th, Tiger was still in the game.
But, after a miraculous recovery from the trees on 13, Tiger couldn’t make the putt, and he faltered on 14 with a bogey. He was through. Immelman tried to make the conclusion interesting with a double bogey on the 16th and a dive into the sand on the 17th, but it didn’t matter.
“I didn’t putt well all week,” Tiger said. “I wasn’t releasing it, wasn’t getting the overspin like I normally do. Out here if you’re not starting the ball perfectly on line, you’re not going to make putts.”
Tiger played horrifically on the par 5s he has owned in the past: “You’ve got to play them under par each day and sprinkle some more (birdies) here and there.”
He didn’t.
When the Lost Grand Slam was brought up, Tiger said he had “learned my lesson there with the press. I’m not going to say anything.”
What’s he going to do now?
“I’m going to go up there (to the clubhouse) and eat a little big. I’m a little hungry right now.”
Maybe he wasn’t quite hungry enough.
Tiger was not The Man, or Immelman, at The Masters.
Woody Paige: 303-954-1095 or wpaige@denverpost.com
