Lining Up for a Shot at Woods

The Masters is golf’s rite of spring, the real beginning of the season. It is a major stage where careers are defined. It is sloping fairways, billiard-table greens, Amen Corner, stately pines as straight as one-irons, kaleidoscopic azaleas and Woods.

It’s the tournament great players point toward as the real launching pad for their year and one lesser players simply hope will some day include them.

A favorite winner’s circle for Nelson, Sarazen, Snead, Palmer, Player, Nicklaus . . . and now the best player in the world no one can possibly beat on the even tougher layout at Augusta National.

Tiger Woods has already won three times this year, finished second three times and won 10 events since the last Masters. Players have acknowledged they’re intimidated simply by his presence, that once he gets off to a fast start he’s unbeatable. Might as well get ready to watch him slip on a second green jacket, a slightly larger size than the one he won in 1997 by a record 12 strokes.

No way Phil Mickelson can stop him. Mickelson has three top-10 finishes in his seven Masters appearances, but he can’t seem to get everything together at the majors. He’s still waiting to win his first and has never shot better than 71 on Sunday in Augusta.

Darren Clarke can’t win. He has missed the cut in two of his four PGA Tour events this year, tied for 42nd in another and missed the cut here last year.

Hal Sutton? You must be kidding. Sutton hasn’t made the cut here since 1985.

Then again, those three have done something this year no one else has; they’ve all beaten Woods on Sunday, handing him his three second-place finishes.

Mickelson, the only player Woods has finished second to more than once, ended Woods’ six-tournament winning streak at the Buick Invitational in La Jolla in February, giving away a seven-shot lead Sunday before gathering himself to win by four. He also finished first to Woods’ second in the ’98 Mercedes Championships at Maui and, after his victory Sunday in the BellSouth Classic at Duluth, Ga., is the only player other than Woods to win twice this year.

“I made the same kind of shots last week that I need to make here this week,” Mickelson said. “I’m playing well this year. I’m very confident.”

Clarke, the hearty Northern Irishman who stopped Woods, 4 and 3, in the 36-hole Andersen Consulting match-play event six weeks ago at La Costa, isn’t backing down either.

“I’m here this week as a contender,” he said.

“I thought I could compete [in previous Masters], but there’s a difference between thinking you can compete and knowing you can compete.”

Sutton’s record in the Masters is the most abysmal of any player of his stature, a 12-time tour winner with $10.7 million in earnings. He has made three cuts in his 14 appearances at Augusta. But Sutton also went toe to toe with Woods at the Players Championship two weeks ago and beat Woods by a shot.

“This has always been the albatross around my neck,” Sutton said of the Masters, “but I’m looking forward to this one.

“I’m a lot smarter golfer than I used to be, my short game is a whole lot better. . . . I hope what happened two weeks ago can be a lesson to all the others that Tiger can be beat.”

Sutton’s victory followed defeatist comments the week before from Colin Montgomerie and Davis Love III that rankled Sutton. Montgomerie said that after Woods shot 69 in the first round, the “tournament was over.” Love, going against Woods in the final round, said he was intimidated.

Sutton wanted none of that, said it was time to take Woods off the unbeatable pedestal and beat him.

“I know Hal, and I know he’s a man’s man,” David Duval said of Sutton’s approach to playing Woods. “I’m sure he said, ‘Bring him on and I’ll slap him around a little bit.’ ”

Duval is one of several players, including Woods, who begin thinking of the Masters as soon as they’ve finished throwing away the wrapping from their Christmas presents. He started last year’s tournament as the favorite, having won four times heading to Augusta. He hasn’t won since.

“Now’s the time I’ve been working for,” he said. “And not to mean I’ve neglected other events, but I believe I’ve had a bit of an eye to the future through the course of the year so far. So that’s a balance I’ll have to work on.”

Duval, like many others in this field of 95, hopes the future is now.

Jose Maria Olazabal, the defending champion, is coming to Augusta with a similar attitude to last year, when he said he was playing poorly. Now he says he can’t control his driver, which could cause problems on the narrowed fairways this year. The rough has grown thicker, though it’s still barely longer than fairways on some of this country’s municipal courses, and has significantly narrowed some fairways, particularly on Nos. 9, 10, 11 and 13.

Ernie Els, Steve Elkington, Jesper Parnevik, Vijay Singh, Tom Lehman, Justin Leonard, Greg Norman, Montgomerie, Duval, Love . . . all multiple tour- or international-event winners who haven’t won at Augusta. To win, they’ll need to attack a course that has been wind-swept in chilly conditions for a couple of days, with greens that should speed up, as usual, through the weekend. What they don’t need to do, Norman says, is factor Woods into the equation.

“When players say he’s playing at 80% and we’ve got to be playing at 110% to beat him, man, I’d love people to say that about me,” Norman said.

“Davis Love made this comment that he gets intimidated by playing with Tiger Woods. You think about that. . . . You go, whoa, they’re already beaten. . . .

“There’s going to be a lot of other whippersnappers coming out here who say I can beat him . . . so if you don’t think you can beat him, don’t step out here.”