Start Tailoring the Jacket Now

I know a handsome, young black gentleman from Orange County who is going to look great in a green jacket.

What a genuine pleasure it is to watch Tiger Woods at work, as during his round of 66 Friday at the Masters golf tournament. Perhaps he won’t win the championship and someone else Sunday will wear the victor’s coat, but just observing this fledgling pro play 27 holes of one of the globe’s most demanding courses in 96 strokes over two days--while Nick Faldo needed 81 to finish 18--was a thing of beauty.

“That’s why this young man is so special,” raved six-time Masters champion Jack Nicklaus. “He makes the golf course into nothing. If he’s playing well, the golf course becomes nothing.”

There are 36 holes to go, but everything seems predestined for this Southern California native son, only 21 years and 108 days old, to become the 61st Masters’ youngest champion, to become any Grand Slam tournament’s first black champion, and to plant his flag in the golf world like an astronaut on the moon.

I wish you could have seen him Friday in person, and I don’t only mean at his best. You should have seen Tiger in the twilight, swinging at two bags of practice balls after 18 demanding holes of golf. Or, better yet, you should have seen him at 3 o’clock in the afternoon, when another golfer his age--any age--might have come permanently unglued.

He had just enjoyed a sweet shot at the long--555 yards--second hole, chipping in from 12 feet for a birdie. Tiger was ready to rock and roll. His front nine Thursday had been a total disaster, a 40, one that distressed him so much that in a TV interview, Woods blurted out an R-rated word, saying, “I was pretty [synonym for “ticked”] off at the way I played.”

Feeling better now, Tiger aimed his approach toward the rear of Augusta National’s undulating No. 3 green, actually preferring to chip from the fringe if the ball wouldn’t stick. But he caught a literal bad break. Rather than rolling onto a flat patch on the right-hand side, the ball spun backward onto a slope, up which Woods was forced to pitch.

“That’s a tough pitch,” he said later, “because if I pitched it short, I would have had to do it again. The greens are so severe that the ball keeps rolling and rolling.”

He managed to flip it six feet from the cup, but couldn’t quite make the putt.

That’s when you should have seen him. Woods shook a stick at the cup. He was totally . . . mmmm, ticked off, because this had cost him a par. If Tiger could have gone, “Grrrr,” he would have. Waggling his club toward the hole, Woods looked as though he wouldn’t mind spontaneously digging a new one. Instead, he plucked the ball from it with his right hand, released it in midair, then snatched the ball, palm down, with an angry snap. A bogey. Tiger can’t stand taking bogeys.

He never took another.

For the remainder of his round, Tiger shot four more birdies and an eagle. He was poetry in motion. A sand wedge at No. 5 dropped two feet from the cup. An eight-iron at No. 13 had to travel 165 yards to carry the water, 170 to the hole. Tiger put the ball 20 feet past the cup. Then he sank the eagle putt.

At that moment--clip and save for posterity--Woods became leader of the Masters for the first time in his life. Nicklaus has suggested that Woods could win more Augusta jackets than he and Arnold Palmer did combined. This wasn’t difficult to believe, watching Woods weave his handiwork while skilled laborers ranging from Greg Norman to defending champion Faldo were failing to even proceed to the next round.

Over two days, Tiger has:

* averaged 338 yards off the tee;

* hit 23 of 28 fairways;

* taken 58 putts, an average of 1.611.

“It’s what I came here to do, try to win the tournament,” said Woods, who had never even broken par at Augusta until two days ago.

This is the kind of self-confidence that amazes me, and everyone else. He’s not rattled . . . we are. We felt guilty wondering whether Tiger truly had a shot at winning this tournament. Now we wonder by how many shots he will win it.

Who’s going to stop him? Colin Montgomerie? Costantino Rocca? Could be, but don’t bet Sunday brunch on it.

“There’s so many guys who could win it,” Woods contends, before turning from the sports news to the weather. “If we get the frontal system that’s moving through here, get the rain, then this golf course will play easy and you can attack some of the pins.”

The kid--if you can call him that--is human--if you can call him that--so his peers hold out hope.

Paul Stankowski, six shots off the pace, understands the fuss, yet says, “It’s only Friday, and a lot of things can happen. I saw the fist-pumping, and the hand-shaking stuff [by Woods] and I told my caddie that I was just going to laugh. That’s fine. I’m sure he’s not going to be as comfortable coming out here tomorrow with the lead. We saw what happened last year with Norman. There’s a lot of guys breathing down his neck.”

I know what he means.

But I see Tiger in green.