Chip for the Ages

The shortest distance was a straight line of about 30 feet between his golf ball, tight against a collar of heavy grass at the edge of the 16th green at Augusta National, and the flagstick that marked the position of the hole.

But that’s not the direction Tiger Woods took on the last day of suffocating pressure at the Masters a year ago, clinging to a one-shot lead and carefully weighing the chances of a risky shot to a tilted green that might wind up costing him the tournament.

Instead, what Woods did probably won it. From start to finish, Woods’ ball traveled about 50 feet ... 25 feet up a slope, then reversing itself and taking off at an angle, slowly rolling toward the hole, 25 feet back down.

As it reached the edge of the hole, the ball stopped for a full four seconds, hesitating, as if unsure what to do next. Then it fell in.

“An earthquake,” Woods said, alluding to a shot you can feel but simply don’t see.

“You could drop hundreds of balls [at that same spot] and you might only make one.

“That’s a shot, once in a lifetime.”

Magic moments in sports need something besides sheer brilliance to become legendary. They need a classic sense of timing, and Woods’ clutch shot had that part covered. A two-shot lead over Chris DiMarco with two holes left was just enough to get him into a playoff, because Woods bogeyed the last two holes.

Take away that chip shot and Woods could have lost. Instead, the ball fell in and “the Chip” found its place in the lexicon of sports. It’s right there with “the Drive,” featuring John Elway, and “the Catch,” with Dwight Clark, and “the Play,” belonging forever to Cal and the Stanford band.

After Woods’ shot fell, the roar of the crowd reverberated off the pine trees and resonated off the pond at the 16th hole, a sound so deafening that even DiMarco got caught up in the moment.

“You cannot hear at all. So loud,” DiMarco said. “Tiger screamed when he chipped in, he screamed so loud [that] if you watch TV, you cannot even think about hearing him. He is drowned out by the people. It’s amazing. I said, ‘Good job’ to him four times at the top of my lungs before he saw me mouthing it.”

No one could have seen this one coming, but the 16th at Augusta National is no ordinary parcel of golf real estate.

The hole was once a capital in the realm of Jack Nicklaus, who birdied it 16 times in his 45 Masters appearances, including the final-round 65 in his historic charge to win a sixth green jacket in 1986.

He also made a 40-foot birdie putt up the slope to outlast Tom Weiskopf and Johnny Miller and win in 1975.

But after Nicklaus played his final Masters last year, Woods took ownership of the hole in one spectacular moment.

There were victories counted on many fronts, not just the one belonging to Woods. The Masters had an instant classic on its hands, CBS reaped an overnight ratings increase of 41% and Nike Golf found a place on the map.

Bob Wood, president of Nike Golf, was stretched out on his couch at home when Woods stood over his shot at the 16th.

“I’ll never forget,” Wood said. “I watch that shot, the ball rolls down and stays there, then falls in. It was almost like an out-of-body experience. I was thinking about five different things. One was, what an unbelievable shot, then the whole Nike ball thing, then thinking that they’re going to be showing that shot forever.

“In the year 2050, when Jim Nantz’s grandson is on the air, they’ll still be showing that shot.

“It’s part of the lore of history. Everybody will know forever that we make golf balls.”

Wood said that although the numbers fluctuated almost monthly, Nike’s share of the golf-ball market for its Nike One ball was triple what it was a year ago.

According to a statistical model done for The Times by Sponsorship Research International, based on a 30-second advertising spot rate of $250,000, it was worth about $233,333 to Nike because of the CBS coverage of Woods’ chip.

The live camera shot of the ball as it hovered on the edge of the hole, its logo clearly visible, offered four seconds of exposure for Nike.

This four-second period, or $33,333, combined with a close-up of the ball before Woods chipped (six seconds, $50,000) and the five replays that followed (18 seconds, $150,000) and that’s a total of 28 seconds.

According to SRI, that actual broadcast value could be multiplied by five to seven times to take into account subsequent coverage of the shot, including replays on local news and sports highlight shows as well as print and Internet coverage that captured the logo on the ball.

As far as Nike’s Wood is concerned, those are only numbers.

“It’s beyond calculating,” he said. “It’s almost priceless.”

And according to Woods, it was also sort of a fluke. Asked to weigh the skill and luck involved, he had a quick answer.

“Mostly luck. A little bit of skill to put the spin on the golf ball and after that, it was all luck. Could have read it wrong, could have released it wrong. The only skill was, I put some sauce on it.”

Sauce on a chip? For Woods and the Masters, it was the perfect recipe for a classic moment.

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The Masters

* When: Thursday-Sunday.

* Where: Augusta National Golf Club (7,445 yards, par 72), Augusta, Ga.

* Purse: TBA ($7 million in 2005). Winner’s share: TBA ($1.26 million in 2005).

* TV: USA (Thursday-Friday, 1-4 p.m.) and Channel 2 (Saturday, 12:30-4 p.m.; Sunday, 11:30 a.m.-4 p.m.).

* Last year: Tiger Woods won his fourth Masters title, beating Chris DiMarco with a 15-foot birdie putt on the first hole of a playoff. Woods bogeyed the last two holes of regulation after taking a two-stroke lead with a remarkable chip shot on No. 16.

* Course note: The club has changed six holes, mainly by lengthening them -- No. 1 (20 yards), No. 4 (35 yards), No. 7 (40 yards), No. 11 (15 yards), No. 15 (30 yards) and No. 17 (15 yards). Also, a tongue was added to the fairway bunker on No. 1 and more trees were added to the right side of the 11th fairway.

* Tee times: D8