Equally remarkable, perhaps, is how many have held up over time. Here is a look at those Masters records Woods set and tied, and how many remain after 23 years. Hint: They’ve held up pretty damn well.

RECORDS SET

Lowest 72-hole score
Woods shot rounds of 70-66-65-69—270 to best the 271 total Jack Nicklaus (1965) and Ray Floyd (1976) shared previously. Since then, Jordan Spieth has tied Woods’ record, going 64-66-70-70 in 2015.

Most 3s by a champion
Woods put down a 3 on his card 26 times in 1997, a total that included 10 pars, 14 birdies and two eagles. Horton Smith held the previous mark of 22, which he set in 1936, and which Tom Watson matched in 1977. Woods produced another 26 treys during his 2005 championship run, making him the only player to equal that mark to date. Patrick Reed had a solid effort in 2018 with 23, and Tiger had 18 during his win last year.

Youngest Champion
Barely of legal drinking age at 21 years, 3 months, 14 days, Woods’ mark still stands. He beat out Seve Ballesteros, who was 23 years, 4 days old when he won in 1980. Jordan Spieth has since supplanted Seve as the second-youngest, winning in 2015 at 21 years, 8 months old.

Woods with caddie Fluff Cowan.
Augusta National

Youngest leader, first 54 holes
As with being the youngest champion, Woods’ 201 total for the first 54 holes at age 21 also bested Ballesteros by nearly two years. This is one of the few records Woods set in 1997 that has fallen. Spieth was 20 years, 8 months and 17 days when he held a share of the 54-hole lead in 2014.

Youngest leader, first 36 holes
OK, it’s like a broken record, but it is a record. Woods again tops Seve for the honour.

Youngest player to shoot 65
At 21 years, three months and 13 days, Woods’ third-round 65 destroyed the previous mark Phil Mickelson set in 1996, when Lefty was well into his 25th year.

Youngest player to shoot 66
Coming a day earlier than his 65, Woods’ round toppled Ballesteros, who was 23 years, 1 day when he carded an opening-round 66 in 1980. We’re still waiting for someone younger to do better.

Youngest player to shoot 30 on second nine
Woods’ rally to the green jacket in 1997 started with a spectacular 30 on the second nine in the opening round after a 40 on the front side. Woods was 21 years, 3 months and 11 days old when accomplishing this feat. No one younger has done it since. Woods’ age bested that of Maurice Bembridge from 1974 when Bembridge was 29 years, one month and 24 days. Bank on this one remaining intact for a while.

Winner at Masters in first professional major start
Woods is the sole owner of this accomplishment, one that hasn’t been duplicated since.

Widest margin of victory
Woods left Tom Kite in the dust by a dozen blows, breaking the nine-stroke cushion Jack Nicklaus enjoyed in 1965. Not only hasn’t Woods’ mark been matched, it hasn’t even been threatened. Only Spieth in 2015 has won by as much as four strokes.

Largest lead first 54 holes
Raymond Floyd had an eight-shot margin heading into 1976’s final round but Woods did him one better, creating a nine-shot gap after three rounds in 1997.

Low final 54 holes
With a nice round 200 during the final three rounds, Woods bested Johnny Miller’s previous record of 202 set in 1975 by two shots.

Lowest final 63 holes
Yeah, good luck topping this one. Woods went 22 under par after playing his initial nine holes four over. How stunning was this? The previous mark was 13 under par by Jack Nicklaus in 1965 and Johnny Miller a decade later.

Sam Greenwood

Worst first nine holes by a champion
Speaking of that opening-nine 40, it marks the worst start ever by a Masters champion (by two strokes) since Ralph Guldahl, who opened with 38 in 1939.

Lowest score, middle 36 holes
Actually, Woods’ 66-65—131 on Friday and Saturday in 1997 has been tied—by Woods, who produced identical numbers during the middle two rounds in 2005. Prior to 1997 the mark had been held by Nick Price, who shot 12-under-par 132 in 1986, thanks primarily to a third-round 63.

Lowest score, 45-hole span
Woods 19 under par from No. 10 in 1997’s opening round through the end of Round 3 topped Floyd’s 14 under par from 1976, which started on the first hole of the tournament.

Most strokes under par, second nine for tournament
It took 35 years but Woods took down Arnold Palmer’s mark of playing the second-nine holes in 12 under par in 1962 by four shots. In 1997 Woods went 30-32-33-33 for an aggregate of 16 under par, a mark that has not been touched since

Second nine holes played in par or better
Incredibly, no one had ever played the back nine without a bogey during a Masters until Woods in 1997, when he made 22 pars, 12 birdies and a pair of eagles without a blemish. Before that, Ben Hogan in 1951 and Ben Crenshaw in 1995 each played those 36 holes with one bogey.

Better ball, second-nine holes
Woods gets a golf clap for producing a “ringer” score of 10-under-par 26 for the second nine in 1997. That beats Gary Player’s 27 in 1974 by a single shot.

Under par at Amen Corner, all four roundsWoods traversed the treacherous trio of hole in seven-under par in 1997, going two under on No. 11, one under on No. 12 and four under on No. 13. The best anyone could do before that was Bernhard Langer at five-under in 1985.

RECORDS TIED

Most subpar rounds, one tournamentIn the history of the Masters, 42 players have shot under par for all four rounds a total of 67 times. Woods joined that club in 1997 and has since turned the trick on four additional occasions, in 2001, 2002, 2010 and 2019, making him the only player to do it five times. Raymond Floyd, Gary Player, Tom Watson, Angel Cabrera and Phil Mickelson are next with three times each.

Low score, first 54 holes
Tied Floyd’s 201 total for the first three rounds from 1976. Spieth went one better with a 200 through 54 holes in 2015.

Icon Sportswire

Three rounds in the 60s
When Woods played his final three rounds in the 60s in 1997 it marked the 18th time a player had three rounds in the 60s. Since then it has happened another 25 times (the latest being by Patric Reed, Jon Rahm and Bubba Watson in 2018), for a total of 43 times by 35 different players. No player has ever shot four rounds in the 60s in one Masters.

Most 3s by any player
Woods parred 10 par 3s, birdied 14 par 4s and and eagled a pair of par 5s for a total of 26, equaling a mark held by Larry Nelson, who did it in 1984. Woods made another 26 threes during his win in 2005.

Most holes under par, four round totals
Woods was under par for the four rounds in 1997 on 11 holes, matching Couples in 1992, Bernhard Langer in 1993 and Crenshaw in 1995. David Duval matched the 11 figure in 2001 but unfortunately, that was also the year that Woods re-wrote the record by being under par on 12 holes—Nos. 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 11, 13, 14, 15, 17 and 18. Spieth could have matched the mark in 2015 if not for a final-hole bogey that offset an opening-round birdie, and Woods got to 11 again in 2019.

Most rounds better than the field (no ties)
Woods’ 66-65 were the solo low scores for rounds two and three in 1997. Woods joined Byron Nelson (66 in round one and 70 in round four in 1937) and Jack Nicklaus (64-69 in rounds three and four in 1965) as the only players to ever do this. Jordan Spieth joined this heady company with a 66 in 2018’s first round and 64 in the final round.

Best performance by a champion on No. 11
This might seem like a bogus record but when you do something that only one person has done in nearly 50 years, it’s kind of cool. The two under par Woods posted on No. 11 in 1997 matched the efforts of Jimmy Demaret in 1940; Byron Nelson, 1942; Herman Keiser, 1946; Claude Harmon, 1948 and Crenshaw in 1995. Woods tied the mark again in 2001, and Trevor Immelman joined the club in 2008

The post Tiger Woods set or tied 27 Masters records in 1997. Here they are and how they’ve held up appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

TV Coverage
For viewers in the UAE, coverage starts at 6.15pm with selected ‘Featured Groups’ on OSN Sports 4HD. Amen Corner coverage begins at 7.45pm on OSN Sports 5HD with the main telecast beginning at 10pm on OSN Sports 3HD.

Sunday Tee Times (all times UAE). Note: The UAE is eight hours ahead of ET time.
6.00pm. — Vijay Singh
6.10pm. — Ian Poulter, Brian Harman
6.20pm. — Chez Reavie, Phil Mickelson
6.30pm. — Tyrrell Hatton, Doug Ghim (a)
6.40pm. — Martin Kaymer, Kyle Stanley
6.50pm. — Kiradech Aphibarnrat, Xander Schauffele
7.00pm. — Bryson DeChambeau, Branden Grace
7.10pm. — Rafa Cabrera Bello, Tiger Woods
7.20pm. — Bernhard Langer, Fred Couples
7.40pm. — Zach Johnson, Webb Simpson
7.50pm. — Ryan Moore, Jhonattan Vegas
8.00pm. — Adam Scott, Daniel Berger
8.10pm. — Haotong Li, Paul Casey
8.20pm. — Adam Hadwin, Hideki Matsuyama
8.30p.m. — Satoshi Kodaira, Russell Henley
8.40pm. — Kevin Kisner, Francesco Molinari
8.50pm. — Matthew Fitzpatrick, Si Woo Kim
9.00pm. — Charley Hoffman, Tony Finau
9.20pm. — Jimmy Walker, Matt Kuchar
9.30pm. — Jason Day, Bernd Wiesberger
9.40pm. — Justin Rose, Louis Oosthuizen
9.50pm. — Dustin Johnson, Cameron Smith
10.00pm. — Justin Thomas, Jordan Spieth
10.10pm. — Bubba Watson, Marc Leishman
10.20pm. — Henrik Stenson, Tommy Fleetwood
10.30pm. — Rickie Fowler, Jon Rahm
10.40pm. — Patrick Reed, Rory McIlroy

The post Masters 2018: Sunday’s final round Tee Times appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

Equally remarkable, perhaps, is how many have held up over time. Here is a look at those Masters records Woods set and tied, and how many remain after 21 years. Hint: They’ve held up pretty damn well.

RECORDS SET

Lowest 72-hole score
Woods shot rounds of 70-66-65-69—270 to best the 271 total Jack Nicklaus (1965) and Ray Floyd (1976) shared previously. Since then, Jordan Spieth has tied Woods’ record, going 64-66-70-70 in 2015.

Most 3s by a champion
Woods put down a 3 on his card 26 times in 1997, a total that included 10 pars, 14 birdies and two eagles. Horton Smith held the previous mark of 22, which he set in 1936, and which Tom Watson matched in 1977. Woods produced another 26 treys during his 2005 championship run, making him the only player to equal that mark to date.

Youngest Champion
Barely of legal drinking age at 21 years, 3 months, 14 days, Woods’ mark still stands. He beat out Seve Ballesteros, who was 23 years, 4 days old when he won in 1980. Jordan Spieth has since supplanted Seve as the second-youngest, winning in 2015 at 21 years, 8 months old.

Youngest leader, first 54 holes
As with being the youngest champion, Woods’ 201 total for the first 54 holes at age 21 also bested Ballesteros by nearly two years. This is one of the few records Woods set in 1997 that has fallen. Spieth was 20 years, 8 months and 17 days when he held a share of the 54-hole lead in 2014.

Augusta National

Youngest leader, first 36 holes
OK, it’s like a broken record, but it is a record. Woods again tops Seve for the honor.

Youngest player to shoot 65
At 21 years, three months and 13 days, Woods’ third-round 65 destroyed the previous mark Phil Mickelson set in 1996, when Lefty was well into his 25th year.

Youngest player to shoot 66
Coming a day earlier than his 65, Woods’ round toppled Ballesteros, who was 23 years, 1 day when he carded an opening-round 66 in 1980. We’re still waiting for someone younger to do better.

Youngest player to shoot 30 on second nine
Woods’ rally to the green jacket in 1997 started with a spectacular 30 on the second nine in the opening round after a 40 on the front side. Woods was 21 years, 3 months and 11 days old when accomplishing this feat. No one younger has done it since. Woods’ age bested that of Maurice Bembridge from 1974 when Bembridge was 29 years, one month and 24 days. Bank on this one remaining intact for a while.

Winner at Masters in first professional major start
Woods is the sole owner of this accomplishment, one that hasn’t been duplicated since.

Widest margin of victory
Woods left Tom Kite in the dust by a dozen blows, breaking the nine-stroke cushion Jack Nicklaus enjoyed in 1965. Not only hasn’t Woods’ mark been matched, it hasn’t even been threatened. Only Spieth in 2015 has won by as much as four strokes.

Largest lead first 54 holes
Raymond Floyd had an eight-shot margin heading into 1976’s final round but Woods did him one better, creating a nine-shot gap after three rounds in 1997.

Low final 54 holes
With a nice round 200 over the final three rounds, Woods bested Johnny Miller’s previous record of 202 set in 1975 by two shots.

Lowest final 63 holes
Yeah, good luck topping this one. Woods went 22 under par after playing his initial nine holes four over. How stunning was The previous mark was 13 under par by Jack Nicklaus in 1965 and Johnny Miller a decade later.

Sam Greenwood

Worst first nine holes by a champion
Speaking of that opening-nine 40, it marks the worst start ever by a Masters champion (by two strokes) since Ralph Guldahl, who opened with 38 in 1939.

Lowest score, middle 36 holes
Actually, Woods’ 66-65—131 on Friday and Saturday in 1997 has been tied—by Woods, who produced identical numbers during the middle two rounds in 2005. Prior to 1997 the mark had been held by Nick Price, who shot 12-under-par 132 in 1986, thanks primarily to a third-round 63.

Lowest score, 45-hole span
Woods 19 under par from No. 10 in 1997’s opening round through the end of Round 3 topped Floyd’s 14 under par from 1976, which started on the first hole of the tournament.

Most strokes under par, second nine for tournamentIt took 35 years but Woods took down Arnold Palmer’s mark of playing the second-nine holes in 12 under par in 1962 by four shots. In 1997 Woods went 30-32-33-33 for an aggregate of 16 under par, a mark that has not been touched since.

Second nine holes played in par or better
Incredibly, no one had ever played the back nine without a bogey during a Masters until Woods in 1997, when he made 22 pars, 12 birdies and a pair of eagles without a blemish. Before that, Ben Hogan in 1951 and Ben Crenshaw in 1995 each played those 36 holes with one bogey.

Better ball, second-nine holes
Woods gets a golf clap for producing a “ringer” score of 10-under-par 26 for the second nine in 1997. That beats Gary Player’s 27 in 1974 by a single shot.

Under par at Amen Corner, all four rounds
Woods traversed the treacherous trio of hole in seven under par in 1997, going two under on No. 11, one under on No. 12 and four under on No. 13. The best anyone could do before that was Bernhard Langer at five under in 1985.

RECORDS TIED

Most subpar rounds, one tournament
In the history of the Masters 42 players have shot under par for all four rounds a total of 58 times. Woods joined that club in 1997 and has since turned the trick on three additional occasions, in 2001, 2002 and 2010, making him the only player to do it four times.

Low score, first 54 holes
Tied Floyd’s 201 total for the first three rounds from 1976. Spieth went one better with a 200 through 54 holes in 2015.

Icon Sportswire

Three rounds in the 60s
When Woods played his final three rounds in the 60s in 1997 it marked the 18th time a player had three rounds in the 60s. Since then it has happened another 22 times (the latest being by Paul Casey and Phil Mickelson in 2015), for a total of 40 times by 33 different players. No player has ever shot four rounds in the 60s in one Masters.

Most 3s by any player
Woods parred 10 par 3s, birdied 14 par 4s and and eagled a pair of par 5s for a total of 26, equaling a mark held by Larry Nelson, who did it in 1984. Woods made another 26 threes during his win in 2005.

Most holes under par, four round totals
Woods was under par for the four rounds in 1997 on 11 holes, matching Couples in 1992, Bernhard Langer in 1993 and Crenshaw in 1995. David Duval matched the 11 figure in 2001 but unfortunately, that was also the year that Woods re-wrote the record by being under par on 12 holes—Nos. 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 11, 13, 14, 15, 17 and 18. Spieth could have matched the mark in 2015 if not for a final-hole bogey that offset an opening-round birdie.

Most rounds better than the field (no ties)
Woods’ 66-65 were the solo low scores for rounds two and three in 1997. Woods joined Byron Nelson (66 in round one and 70 in round four in 1937) and Jack Nicklaus (64-69 in rounds three and four in 1965) as the only players to ever do this.

Best performance by a champion on No. 11
This might seem like a bogus record but when you do something that only one person has done in nearly 50 years, it’s kind of cool. The two under par Woods posted on No. 11 in 1997 matched the efforts of Jimmy Demaret in 1940; Byron Nelson, 1942; Herman Keiser, 1946; Claude Harmon, 1948 and Crenshaw in 1995. Woods tied the mark again in 2001, and Trevor Immelman joined the club in 2008.

The post Tiger Woods set or tied 27 Masters records in 1997. Here they are and how they’ve held up appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

by Tom Callahan

verybody remembers how it ended, but nobody can say exactly when it began.

Some start the clock the week before the 1997 Masters, when, playing a practice round with Mark O’Meara, Tiger Woods shot 59 at Isleworth while neglecting to birdie two of the par 5s. On the plane ride to Augusta from Orlando, the friends got to talking:

“Do you think it’s possible to win the Grand Slam?” 21-year-old Woods asked 40-year-old O’Meara, then 0 for 54 in major championships. Mark looked at Tiger and thought, You’re the first guy since Nicklaus even
to ask the question, but didn’t say that out loud.

“Unrealistic,” O’Meara replied after a long moment.

“I think it’s possible,” Woods said.

The tournament itself—72 holes as impactful as any ever played—commenced April 10 and climaxed April 13, 20 years ago, kicking off on a blowy Thursday when flying pine needles punctured the air and the first 30 players were immediately whooshed over par. Three victories into his pro career, but still the holder of the U.S. Amateur title, Woods was paired, per tradition, with the defending champion, Nick Faldo. Tiger went out in 40. So, the story might open with his comeback, the birdie at 10, or perhaps with something that happened the day before, Seve Ballesteros’ 40th birthday, when Woods played half a practice round alongside Ballesteros and Jose Maria Olazabal. Breaking off from the Spaniards to try “a few little things” Seve had showed him, Tiger said that evening, “He’s amazing around the greens. There are some things you can learn only from another player.”

On the property but not in the gallery, preferring to watch on television, Earl Woods saw Tiger chip in at 12 to revive his first round. Being more sentimental than his son, Earl wondered if that wasn’t one of those little strokes of genius courtesy of Seve. “C’mon, Pop,” Tiger chided him later, “don’t get carried away.”

Recuperating from open-heart surgery, Earl was napping on the couch at the house they were renting in Augusta, and Tiger was reluctant to stir him. “Daddy,” he whispered finally, which startled Earl. Tiger almost never called him that anymore. “How do you like my stroke?”

“I don’t,” Earl replied in that deadpan, singsong voice that sometimes made Tiger laugh, but not this time.

“What’s wrong with it?”

“Your right hand is breaking down just slightly on the takeaway.”

Earl went to bed and Tiger continued putting on the carpet.

After a puzzling first-nine 40, Tiger played the next 36 holes in 16 under, setting scoring records for low middle 36 holes (131), low last 54 holes (200) and largest 54-hole lead (nine strokes). His 12-stroke margin of victory bested Jack Nicklaus’ mark, set in 1965, by three shots.
Photo by Golf Digest Archive

They were sitting together the year before—or maybe it was the year before that—at the Golf Digest house in Augusta, balancing paper plates of barbecue and beans on their knees, eavesdropping on a discussion of Opens and Invitationals in golf. “Invitationals,” Tiger said under his breath, not bitterly, just matter-of-factly, “were the ways around the Opens.”

Largely depending on how much homework he brought from Stanford, Woods made and missed his two amateur cuts at Augusta. Staying under a sun-streaked cupola in a clubhouse garret known as the Crow’s Nest, Tiger was unable to sleep (“I’ve never been any good at sleeping,” he said), getting up in the middle of the night to prowl the unfamiliar corridors and commune with the well-known ghosts. “The shadows there roll all around the walls,” he said. “That attic is haunted.”

Afraid to switch on any lights, Tiger stumbled into what turned out to be the Champions Locker Room. He sat in the dark in front of 1956 winner Jackie Burke’s locker and reviewed the journey.

Woods was born in 1975, the year Lee Elder broke the four-decade-long color line at the Masters. In 1974, chairman Clifford Roberts greeted the press with the hope that former Augusta caddie Jim Dent would soon win a PGA Tour event and become eligible to play in the tournament, a criterion established in 1972.

Roberts and Bobby Jones might not have been any more bigoted than the average American born in 1894 or 1902, but neither was a champion of affirmative action. They weren’t alone in that. The Professional Golfers’ Association of America didn’t scrub the hateful phrase “professional golfers of the Caucasian race” out of its Constitution until 1961, making the saddest line in a media guide this one after Charlie Sifford’s name: “turned professional-1948; joined PGA Tour-1961.”

Of course, Masters champions as a group could have invited Sifford or anyone else to compete in the tournament—they controlled one slot. In 1969, when 46-year-old Sifford followed up his Greater Hartford Open title of a couple of years earlier by winning the Los Angeles Open (the same day the Jets beat the Colts in the Super Bowl), ’59 Masters champion Art Wall Jr. tried marshaling support for Sifford among his colleagues. Charlie received just a solitary vote: Wall’s.

Elder came to the 1997 Masters on Sunday, by which time everyone knew what was about to happen, because he wanted to be there. Sifford did not come because he didn’t want to be there. He sent Tiger a fax, though: “Don’t fire at all the pins. Be cautious. Be smart. Play the golf course. But when the time comes, let it go. Turn it loose. Be strong. Be yourself.”

A BOOST AND A DIG FROM MARKO
Woods followed the chip-in at 12 on Thursday with a birdie at the par-5 13th to get back to one over. He parred 14, and then, in a pileup of twosomes, reached the tee at the par-5 15th, where O’Meara was just ahead of him in the queue.

Tiger’s tightest bond on tour was with the Florida neighbor he called “Marko,” whose wife, Alicia, told her husband, “That poor kid is sitting over there in his house all alone. Let’s get him over here for dinner.” Mark said, “Tiger had a nice car he hadn’t washed in about a year. I called him up and said, ‘Bring that filthy thing over here, will you? I’m doing my cars. I’ll wash it. I’ll wax it.’ ” That was the beginning of their friendship.

“Marko became a big brother to me,” Woods said. “He taught me a lot of off-the-course things, or tried to. Some of those things, like how to deal with the media, didn’t completely take. But I wouldn’t have ever had the success I had early on without his help.”

“He hit this bullet, taking this ridiculous line down the left between this really tall tree and a shorter one. The ball just went extra fast and kept climbing.” —Paul Azinger describing seeing Tiger’s swing.
Photo by Golf Digest Archive

On a small wood bench at the 15th tee, Tiger took a seat to wait out the delay, and O’Meara joined him. Nothing was said for about a minute. The week before, as Mark was handing over the $65 he lost to the 59, Tiger had ragged him, in their usual way, “Geez, Mark, what did you shoot, around 87?” Now, in what amounted to a delayed rejoinder, O’Meara said in mock exasperation, “Why don’t you just pretend you’re playing against me? I’m still waiting for you to play bad against me.”

Tiger eagled 15 (his second shot was a mere pitching wedge to six feet). He was under par. Then he birdied 17. The 40 had been overturned by a 30 to get him within three strokes and two players of John Huston’s lead. Faldo said, “Although I had played part of a practice round with Tiger in 1995, now I truly understood what all the excitement was about. He was quite something.”

“Nick and I talk more than you’d think on a golf course,” Woods said, “or more than he does with most people, I hear. I don’t know if it’s just me, but he has things to say [though not this week, 75-81, missing the cut]. You know, just briefly. Just comfortably. He’s a good guy to play with.”

Friday, Tiger traded Faldo for Paul Azinger, who was also operating mainly on hearsay. “I’d never seen him hit a shot in person,” Azinger said, and being immersed in his own double bogey at 1, Paul still had not seen Woods make a live strike until Tiger’s drive at the par-5 second.

“The sensation was kind of otherworldly,” Zinger said. “I mean, he hit this bullet, taking this ridiculous line down the left between this really tall tree and a shorter one. The ball just went extra fast and kept climbing. It stayed in the air forever, until it finally disappeared down the hill to some spot where probably no one had ever been before.” Azinger and his caddie just looked at each other and laughed.

Tiger shot 66 that day (to 73 for Paul). At 13, Woods made another eagle (with an 8-iron to 20 feet), and Jim Nantz, a telecaster with a sense of history, told CBS sidekick Ken Venturi, “Kenny, let the record show, a little after 5:30 on this Friday, April 11, Tiger takes the lead for the very first time in the Masters.”

At day’s end, Woods led Scotsman Colin Montgomerie by three strokes, and said goodbye to Azinger and hello to Monty.

The gallery was 10-deep, all trying to get a close-up look at the phenom. Not only were the Patrons entranced: Masters Sunday garnered a 15.8 overnight rating, which CBS claimed as a record for a golf major.
Photo by Golf Digest Archive

Also known as Mrs. Doubtfire and Billy Bunter, Montgomerie managed to win eight Orders of Merit and still be the leading target for irreverence on the European Tour. Apple-cheeked and curly-haired, he was the Gerber baby all grown up. British schoolboy “Billy Bunter” is a U.K. cartoon character, obnoxious, corpulent (particularly enamored of sticky buns), obtuse, self-important, conceited and positive that he is always right.

“The pressure is mounting,” Montgomerie said Friday night, “and I have a lot more experience in major championships.”

“That definitely motivated me,” Woods said. “He had more experience [in majors], no doubt about that. [Everyone did; this was Tiger’s first as a pro.] But he hadn’t won a major, and neither had I. If someone who had won major championships had said that, then I would have let it pass. But since he hadn’t won one either, I thought we were on a clean slate.”

Tiger shot 65 this time, to 74 for Montgomerie, who at the back door of the interview room was offered a dispensation but insisted on testifying. It would be the most appealing appearance of his major-less career.

“All I have to say,” he said with a chastened smile, “is one brief comment today. There is no chance. We’re all human beings here . . . [but] there’s no chance humanly possible that Tiger is going to lose this tournament. No way.”

Probably thinking of the 11-shot swing between Greg Norman (“Dead Man Walking”) and Faldo only 12 months before, someone asked, “What makes you say that?”

“Have you just come in?” Montgomerie replied with a sigh. “Have you been away? Have you been on holiday?”

Monty knew that Woods hit the ball “long and straight.” He was aware that Tiger’s iron shots were “very accurate.” But he had no idea that anyone could putt like this. “When you add it all together,” he said, “Tiger is nine shots clear [of Italian Costantino Rocca], and I’m sure that will be higher tomorrow.”

After all, “Faldo is not lying second,” and “Greg Norman is not Tiger Woods.”

‘There’s no chance humanly possible that Tiger is going to lose this tournament. No way.’ — Colin Montgomerie, after shooting 74 to Woods’ 65 in the third round

FINISHING THE RACE
Muhammad Ali, on his off nights, could look a little blotchy. In the ring before the opening bell, his complexion sometimes tipped what was to come. But against George Foreman in Africa, standing alone in one corner, waiting out Zaire’s interminable anthem, Ali gleamed like a copper kettle. That’s what Tiger looked like Sunday morning.

Late the night before, as they shared a bowl of ice cream, Earl advised his son, “This is going to be the hardest round of golf you’ll ever play, and the most rewarding.”

“When I arrived,” said Elder, who was 62, “Tiger had just left the practice range. I told him, ‘Just do what you’ve been doing all week, and things will work out.’ Embracing Lee, Woods whispered, “Thanks for making this possible.” Then, on his way from the practice putting green to the first tee, he prodded himself: Finish the race. For the next four hours, Tiger rethought those three words over and over.

Sunday’s score was a prudently commercial 69, nearly risk-free if you don’t count the narrowly avoided calamity of a small boy in the gallery who reached up for Woods in the middle of a ferocious swing. And yet, the lead swelled by three strokes. The Masters record of 271 by Nicklaus (1965) and Raymond Floyd (’76) was trimmed by a shot, and the runner-up, Tom Kite, lost by 12. Only Old Tom Morris had ever won a major by as much as 13, in the 1862 Open Championship at Prestwick, Scotland. (Young Tom won one by 12.) In his professional debut, Woods was already reaching back to shepherds and crooks.

First in driving distance (323.1 yards on average, a full 25 yards beyond the next-best, Scott McCarron); tied for first in greens in regulation (with Kite and Fred Funk, 55 of 72); and recording zero three-putts, Tiger shook the very geometry of golf, pushing not just the envelope but the boundaries, the capacities, of the National. His normal approach clubs weren’t normal:

No.1 400-yard par 4: driver, pitching wedge.
No.2 555-yard par 5: driver, 8-iron.
No.3 360-yard par 4: driver, 15-yard chip.
No.4 205-yard par 3: 6-iron.
No.5 435-yard par 4: driver, pitching wedge.
No.6 180-yard par 3: 9-iron.
No.7 360-yard par 4: 2-iron, pitching wedge.
No.8 535-yard par 5: driver, 2-iron.
No.9 435-yard par 4: 3-wood, pitching wedge.
No.10 485-yard par 4: 2-iron, 8-iron.
No.11 455-yard par 4: driver, pitching wedge.
No.12 155-yard par 3: pitching wedge.
No.13 485-yard par 5: driver, 8-iron.
No.14 405-yard par 4: driver, pitching wedge.
No.15 500-yard par 5: driver, pitching wedge.
No.16 170-yard par 3: 9-iron.
No.17 400-yard par 4: 3-wood, sand wedge.
No.18 405-yard par 4: driver, sand wedge.

Eleven wedges into 18 greens, and every par 5 reachable in two.

Woods caps the first of his four Masters titles.
Photo by Augusta National

Rocca said, “He hit a 6-iron into the wind [at the par-3 fourth] when I hit a 1-iron, and his drive was so long at 8, he had only a 4-iron to the green. He pulled it a little left, and, again with the 4-iron, hit a low, running shot to two feet for birdie. Two 4-irons in a row. Very different.” (Rocca shot 75, but his long day of hearing “Down in front!” wasn’t wasted. Come September, at Valderrama in Spain, the Europeans would beat the Americans in another Ryder Cup, and Costantino would defeat Woods in the singles, 4 and 2.)

To Tiger, how he had won the ’97 Masters wasn’t a bit complicated. “The majority of my putts were uphill,” he said, “because I was able to control my irons into the greens. Why was I able to do that? Because I had short irons into the greens. Why did I have those short iron shots? Because I drove the ball great. And putting was just a reflection of everything working, from the tee box to the green. Or from the green to the tee box, if you think about it. My dad always taught me to think every golf course backward.”

Tiger climbed up the hill from the 18th green straight into Earl’s arms. “My favorite shot of the day,” President Clinton said on the telephone, “was that last shot with your dad.”

At his home in Kingwood, Texas, Sifford said, “It put the Masters to rest for me. You know, it’s 50 years [practically to the day] since Jackie Robinson broke baseball’s color line. Whenever Tiger tips his cap on the golf course, I consider that to be recognition to the unrecognized. And, when he hugged his daddy at the end, I shed a few tears. Watching Tiger walk up the final hole, I felt like I was part of him. He did what I wanted to do but didn’t have the chance—I was too doggone old. Starting out, I wanted four things: to play in a PGA tournament, to play in a National Open, to be inducted into the Hall of Fame, and to play in the Masters. I got three out of the four, so that ain’t too bad.”

Tiger gets a hand from 1996 Masters winner Nick Faldo. Photo by Augusta National/Getty Images

More than 44 million people watched on television, the biggest TV audience ever counted for a golf tournament. Away from the golf, a major and a minor tragedy hung over the grounds. When the price of scalped badges shot up to $7,000 apiece, local businessman Allen F. Caldwell III couldn’t make good on 70 tickets he had promised some big shots. He killed himself with a 12-gauge shotgun.

Nineteen-seventy-nine Masters and 1984 U.S. Open champion Fuzzy Zoeller, trying to be funny for a television crew, warned Woods off serving fried chicken at the next Champions Dinner. “Or collard greens,” Zoeller said, “or whatever the hell they serve.”

(“My Tiger have no idea what collard greens are,” his mother, Tida, said.)

Zoeller’s mortal sin was the word “they.” That was something inside Fuzzy, or around him, or around all of us, that just slipped out. (It’s always slipping out, isn’t it?) That cost a pretty good guy a contract with Kmart and a legacy of laughter.

In the Butler Cabin (not named for the butlers), Faldo helped Tiger into the green jacket, the first of four. Woods would have bigger and better tournaments, believe it or not, but none as important. At the 2000 U.S. Open, when Tiger won by 15 strokes, Old Tom’s major mark of 13 wasn’t the only thing that fell. Everything tumbled that week at Pebble Beach. Willie Smith, Willie Anderson and Long Jim Barnes surrendered records to Tiger that they had held for 101, 97 and 79 years.

It was the history of the Masters, as dark as the Champions Locker Room in the middle of the night, that made 1997 more important. Also, the green jacket is a more tactile prize than the largest silver loving cup.

Back at the rented house, celebrating with friends and family, Earl went looking for Tiger and found him in his bedroom asleep (“I’ve never been any good at sleeping”) fully clothed with his arms wrapped around the green jacket. “Cuddling it,” as Tiger said, “like it was a little bear.”

And, a year later, he put it on Mark O’Meara.

The post The Class of ’97 appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

“It was the easiest 65 I’ve ever seen,” Montgomerie said on Tuesday in a teleconference with reporters that was set up by NBC/Golf Channel.

For Montgomerie, it didn’t take long for him to realize he was witnessing something special.

“The second hole was frightening. I hit the drive, I had the honor and I hit my drive to the brow of the hill on the second,” Montgomerie said. “Now this is the forward tees, remember. They had not moved the second tee 60 yards back by then, so I was at the brow of the hill, just about reaching with my 4-wood; that shows you how old it was. And he was down — he must have been 150 yards ahead of me and hit a 9-iron to the back.

“Now from then on, from that second hole onwards, I thought, hang on a minute. This is something extraordinary. The pin was located back left in that very narrow tongue of the green there and he flew the green with a 9-iron, and I came up my usual short right, down the bottom right there, and I was amazed at that. That was the one shot that really springs to mind.”

Montgomerie also highlighted Woods hitting pitching wedge for his second shot into the par-5 15th and his sand wedge to kick-in range on No. 18 to set up a final birdie.

“This is a game that I had not seen before and none of us had,” he stated.

In his new book, “The 1997 Masters: My Story,” Woods writes that he found motivation for that third round from Montgomerie’s Friday comments that Woods’ lack of experience could be a factor. But following Saturday’s round in which Woods had grabbed a nine-shot lead, Montgomerie no longer thought that mattered.

“There is no chance humanly possible that Tiger is just going to lose this tournament,” Montgomerie told reporters that day before being reminded Greg Norman had blown a six-shot lead the year before. “This is different. This is very different. (Nick) Faldo is not lying second for a start, and Greg Norman is not Tiger Woods.”

This time, Monty was right. Woods added a final-round 69 to shoot the lowest 72-hole score in Masters history and win by a record 12 shots. – By Alex Myers

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