After Being Slammed, Woods Can Turn Table

So what really is the Tiger Effect, as produced by Tiger Woods?

Is it his smile or the fist pump when the ball disappears into the hole? Is it that he can bogey the last two holes of the Masters, watch an opponent’s shot hit the hole and spin out, then go to a playoff and come up with two of his best swings to set up a birdie putt that wins it?

Of course, the Tiger Effect is all that and more, but now that he has put his fourth Masters champion’s paycheck in his back pocket, there are two other words being spoken:

Grand Slam.

The script is already getting passed around eagerly ... Tiger paws Pinehurst at the U.S. Open, then Tiger gets a new lift on the Old Course at St. Andrews and wins the British Open, followed by the capper, Tiger bowls over Baltusrol at the PGA Championship to complete the slam.

With Woods, it’s always this way -- you take what appear to be impossibilities and then consider the possibilities.

Woods inspires leaps of faith like no other player.

He wins the Masters and in minutes, no one remembers how much he was getting hammered because he hadn’t won a major in nearly three years.

That double-digit streak of majors without a victory is so last week.

The truth is, if someone is going to win all four majors this year, Woods is the only one with a shot. But let’s put reality on the back burner for now, ignore the historical limitations of such a notion, because no one has won all four modern majors in a single year, relegate Bobby Jones’ Grand Slam of 75 years ago to a footnote and go ahead and say Tiger can do it.

There’s nothing more difficult in golf, start with that. Jack Nicklaus never did it. Neither did Arnold Palmer or Tom Watson or anybody else. But there really wasn’t a modern Grand Slam until 1960, when Palmer won the Masters and the U.S. Open and, counseled by fabled Pittsburgh golf writer Bob Drum before the British Open, invented the modern Grand Slam, which also would include the PGA Championship.

Palmer wound up second at St. Andrews, losing to Kel Nagle by one shot, but that was the start of the so-called modern Grand Slam.

The original was something else. Jones acknowledged that he had set out to prepare himself for the 1930 golf season with a goal of winning all four of the big championships. The history books tell us that to stay in shape, he played a game called “Doug,” after actor Douglas Fairbanks, which was a cross between badminton and paddle tennis.

When Jones won what we know now as the Grand Slam in 1930, the majors were different -- the U.S. Open and the British Open, plus the U.S. Amateur and the British Amateur. He won them all, a remarkable achievement that led to a tickertape parade in New York and permanent establishment as the grandest figure in his sport.

O.B. Keeler, in the Atlanta Journal, was the first to call it the Grand Slam, using a term from bidding in bridge. George Trevor of the New York Sun called Jones’ feat “the impregnable quadrilateral of golf.”

Woods has created his own terminology. When he won the 2000 U.S. Open (by 15 shots), the British Open (by eight shots) and the PGA Championship, then won the 2001 Masters, he had accomplished the “Tiger Slam” -- he held all four major titles, but he hadn’t won them in the same year.

When he won the Masters and the U.S. Open in 2002, the first two legs in the slam, Woods had claimed seven of the last 11 majors. And until Sunday at Augusta National, he hadn’t won another.

But now there’s the Tiger Effect and this Grand Slam talk again. Woods will remember he was a strong third at Pinehurst in the 1999 U.S. Open and that he shot four rounds in the 60s to win in a breeze at St. Andrews in 2000.

In any event, it must be considered a longshot. Still, with one major down, three to go and Woods out in front, you’ve got to consider the possibilities of the impossibilities.