The Masters puts a cap on an amazing two weeks in sports

So what did we learn from The Masters?

First—and foremost—Phil Mickelson has put the ghosts of Winged Foot behind him once and for all. He put on a remarkable display on the back nine on both Saturday and Sunday to win going away after it appeared likely the tournament would be decided on the 18th green or in sudden death.

Second, Tiger Woods is still Tiger Woods: for good and for bad. There is not another player on the planet who could have come back after a five month layoff and all the self-created tumult in his life and figured out a way to tie for fourth in a major championship. He’s still the same golfer. He’s also still the same person: pitching himself to corporate America during his Monday press conference; authorizing the release of a creepy ad in which his dead father is used to try and sell product; slamming clubs and barking profanities (but no f-bombs) and then getting upset when Peter Kostis asked him about it.

If you expected different, I hope you weren’t disappointed. Those of us who didn’t expect different just sort of shrug, move on and focus on all the truly wonderful stories that made for a remarkable week at Augusta.

The weather was beyond spectacular, which—along with some very inviting pin placements—made for very low scoring. Think about this for a second: Mickelson’s winning score of 272 was two shots higher than Woods’ winning score of 270 back in 1997 when the golf course was 500 yards shorter. I wonder if The Lords of Augusta will lengthen the golf course to 8,000 yards before next year.

Actually, I doubt it. I think they learned a lesson when they went too far with their course alterations that—along with cold, windy weather—led to Zach Johnson winning with a one-over-par 289 three years ago. That was about as dreary a Masters as anyone could remember (no knock on Johnson) and I think the green jackets enjoyed all the roars echoing off the trees on Saturday and Sunday. So don’t expect anything more than the usual tweaks the club makes every year if only to figure out how to spend some of its endless supply of money.

The golf tournament had almost every possible story line imaginable: Tom Watson, who hadn’t made a cut since 2002, shot 67 the first day and finished tied for 18th with his son Michael caddying for him and reminding him constantly that he could still play the golf course even at 60. Fred Couples was in contention almost until the end, looking for all the world as if he was playing a casual round at dusk back home. It looked as if the most serious thing on his mind Sunday afternoon was wondering who was going to win the Rangers-Flyers showdown for the last playoff spot in The East.

Of course that’s not true. One thing people tend to miss about Couples is how competitive he is. Because he looks and sounds casual about his golf game, people think he’s just strolling around making birdies. I remember back in 1998 when I was working on “The Majors,” I spent a lot of time with Couples. That was the year he led The Masters almost the entire week before losing by a stroke to Mark O’Meara. I remember talking to him a month later at The Memorial and he still wasn’t over it.

“A bunch of us went to dinner that night (after The Masters) and I remember no one said a word,” he said back then. “I kind of felt bad because everyone was looking at me to see how I was doing and I was just too down to talk at all.”

You don’t win as much as Couples has won without caring. You don’t have to slam clubs or scream, “goddammit Tiger you suck,” to be competitive. I’m the last person in the world who should or will give anyone a hard time for using profanity. Those of us who use it too much try to control it and sometimes we fail—which is our fault. But when we’re called on it, the best thing to do is not to say, “I don’t think it’s a big deal,” especially if you’ve said a few days earlier that it’s a big deal.

Back to Mickelson: A lot of people, myself included, wondered if he’d ever recover from the Winged Foot meltdown and win another major. He was 36 at the time, two years older than Arnold Palmer was when he won his last major and three years older than Watson was when he won the British Open in 1983. Clearly, the loss scarred him and his attempt to declare his win at the 2007 Players a major win came off as kind of silly.

But he hung in there. One thing people miss about Mickelson is that he’s a grinder. For all the talk about his great talent and ability to pull of magical shots (or not pull off magical shots) he is constantly trying to figure out how to get better: changing swing coaches, bringing in different people to help with his short game and his putting, trying different routines to prepare for majors.

Of course everything in his life changed last year when his wife Amy and then his mother were diagnosed with breast cancer. If he had managed to win the U.S. open at Bethpage last June they would have started filming the movie the next day. He took a break from the tour while Amy underwent surgery and when he came back in August—to slightly less fanfare than Woods at Augusta—he lingered in the press room in Akron after his first meeting with the media, thanking people for their good wishes and trading jokes with writers he IS friendly with as opposed to his long-time rival.

“You know I hate to say this,” he said at one point, “but I think I actually missed you guys.”

He hadn’t played well this year prior to Augusta. Whether it was the genuine distraction of Amy’s continuing struggles to feel well because of the side-affects of her medication or missing the emotional jolt he gets when Woods is playing, he never seriously contended. In the end, none of those tournaments mattered and they certainly don’t matter now. He played memorably down the stretch and it is probably fair to say that his hug with Amy behind the 18th green will be replayed a lot more in the future than Woods’s hug with his father back in ’97 which feels a lot different now to many people than it did prior to November 27th.

In all, it was an amazing two weeks in sports. The Final Four produced a national championship game for the ages and The Masters had so much shot-making your head needed to be on a swivel to keep up. I’m always exhausted when I get home from The Final Four/Masters trip but I remind myself on the way home how incredibly lucky I am to get to go to both events every year.

This year, especially after what happened to me last June, I’ve never felt that way more than I did last night.

*****

Now that I am finally home after 29 of the last 42 days on the road, I’m going to try to take some time to get my life back in order. (You should see my office right now). So, I’m going to skip the blog on Tuesday and Thursday this week unless something monumental occurs—like a two-game Mets winning streak. I hope everyone understands.

Remarkable first day at the Masters -- Woods emphatically returned, Couples leads and Watson still on a roll

Well, no one ever said the guy couldn’t play golf.

All of those who wondered if Tiger Woods could come back and play well after a 144-day layoff from competition got a swift and emphatic answer yesterday. Miss the cut? How about he might win the tournament?

At the climax of one of the more remarkable first days anyone has ever seen at The Masters, Woods shot the best first round score in the 16 Masters he has played, a four-under-par 68. The round included two eagles—one at the eighth where he caught a break with a good hop on his second shot, the other at the 15th where he hit two perfect shots to about 10-feet and drained the putt. He also hit one of those shots that he seems to have invented: a twisting, draw-hook around the trees at the 9th hole. The ball somehow stayed on the green, sucked back to about 10-feet and he made a remarkable birdie.

His behavior wasn’t perfect—there were a couple of club slams—but overall was more subdued, as he had promised it would be. As the round went on and his play improved, the crowd warmed to him more and more. To say he was in a good mood when the round was over is an understatement.

If he puts on a green jacket here on Sunday evening, which is entirely possible, he will be re-deified by most.

And yet, he and his friends at Nike managed to do exactly what Woods said he didn’t want to do: take the focus off his golf. By airing the new Tiger-‘Earl,’ commercial on Wednesday they reminded everyone about the events of the past few months that turned golf from a sport into a soap opera.

Woods was asked about the ad after he finished his round and said this: “Well, I think it’s very apropos. I think that’s what my dad would say. It’s amazing how it—how my dad can speak to me from different ways, even he’s long gone. He’s still helping me. I think any son who has lost a father and who meant so much in their life, I think they would understand the spot.”

Really? I’m a son who has lost a father who meant a lot to me and I don’t get the spot. I certainly don’t get the timing, coming at the precise moment when everyone—EVERYONE—is ready to focus on Woods as a golfer again and put all that’s gone on at the very least on a backburner for a while.

Nike has always gone for edgy ads and it has worked for the company, especially in terms of calling attention to itself. This one may backfire. My sense is that people are offended by the notion of Tiger and Nike somehow trying to cash in on what’s occurred especially NOW. On the one hand he says he wants to move on with his life—which he should be able to do—on the other hand he’s making a commercial that is somehow supposed to rehabilitate his image by saying, ‘Earl would have known better.’

Okay, I’m not even going to get into that. But the timing was bad and the ad is already being parodied on the internet. Enough said.

Meanwhile, even if Woods had NOT been in the field, the Thursday leaderboard would have been fabulous. Fred Couples at 50? Tom Watson at 60??!—again? Not to mention Phil Mickelson—remember him, pretty good player I think—Y.E. Yang, Ian Poulter and Ricky Barnes. All are on the leaderboard, led by Couples who shot his low round ever at The Masters—a 66—to take the lead.

Okay, it’s only Thursday, but it was still pretty cool. I’m biased, but the story of the day for me was Watson. For a long time now he has talked about not being able to play this golf course anymore since he’s not as long as he was years ago and the golf course has been super-sized. He’s only made one cut here since 1998—in 2002—and missed the cut by one two years ago when he played the last three holes in four-over-par.

This year, his son Michael is caddying for him. Michael is a very good amateur player in his own right, in fact father and son finished second in the Pro-Am at Pebble Beach two years ago which Watson called one of the bigger thrills of his career.

Michael Watson works in commercial real estate these days but he’s taking his job this week very seriously. Over the weekend he gave his father a serious talking to, telling him he needed to stop talking about where he USED to hit the ball from before the golf course was lengthened and his drives were shortened. “Okay, you aren’t hitting seven iron anymore, but you can still hit a four or five iron really well,” he told him. “You can still play here if you believe you can play here.”

Both Watsons were in great spirits on Thursday morning. On Sunday afternoon, by pre-arrangement, Tom hit his second shot on the 13th hole way left, using a four iron. On Sunday, families can walk inside the ropes when players go out to practice since there are no fans on the grounds, so Michael’s girlfriend, Beth Lindquist, was walking along.

When everyone walked over to try to find the ball, Michael stunned Beth by taking out an engagement ring, dropping to a knee and proposing.

“The first thing I said was, ‘are you kidding?’” she said on Wednesday. “He said, ‘I’m on one knee, I’m holding an engagement ring do you THINK I’m kidding?’”

So, the week got off to a good start in more ways than one.

In spite of his great round Thursday, Watson’s realistic. He pointed out to the media that he had made two 30-foot bombs on putts that were moving fast when they hit the hole and had gotten it up and down five straight times from the 10th to the 14th holes. Still, it was a great way to start The Masters and it is pretty clear that Watson is still on the roll that began last July with his near miss at Turnberry.

“There’s been a glow since then,” he said. “It’s come really from people coming up to me and saying, ‘hey, you showed me I’m not too old to still do things.’ That’s meant a lot to me.”

If Watson and Couples can somehow stick around the leaderboard through Sunday, it would mean a lot to a lot of people.