Tiger Woods is walking past, and sweat is flooding out of every pore, a boxer hoping he hasn’t gone one fight too many. The white towel is waiting behind him. Is it there to wipe him down? Or is it a signal it’s time to chuck it in?
He stands on those podiums the Americans use for sports stars, and reporters drill down on this shot, and that shot. He’s limped home in the US Masters’ opening round, and it’s not just on the scorecard (two-over 74).
The leg?
“Sore.”
The pain?
“Constant”.
Tiger Woods wipes his face during the opening round.Credit: Getty
He’s out of there, and they mercifully give him the towel. They should have found one of those hundreds of carts which zip around Augusta National and whisked him straight to the shower. And it’s still only Thursday.
A few metres to his left, fellow Masters winner Adam Scott is being asked by an American reporter not once, but twice, about his age and the prospect of having to play 27, maybe 36 holes, in one day later this week if Georgia’s weather closes in.
He’s 42, yet there’s not a bead of sweat on him. Woods could single-handedly refill Rae’s Creek.
“I like this ‘my age’ stuff,” Scott smiles, too polite to take proper offence to the questions.
Adam Scott lines up a putt during the opening round.Credit: Getty
He’d be fitter than three-quarters of the players on tour, and he’s almost double the age of some of them.
He’s rocking a brown shirt. How many guys can make a brown shirt look good?
But in Augusta, at this time of year, things just seem to happen for Australia’s only Green Jacket winner, 10 years ago this week.
He’s so at ease with the event he didn’t bother turning up until Monday afternoon. His caddie Steve Williams registered as the 87th of the 88 loopers, enough to send Australia’s superstitious types into a spin, not to mention it was the same year Larry Mize chipped in to beat Greg Norman in a play-off.
Scott has been mucking around the last few weeks with his equipment, shafts and heads, and admits he’s still not completely comfortable with them in the biggest golf event of the year.
Can you imagine Steve Smith going out to bat in the first Test at Lord’s with a change to a bat he only started using a couple of days ago?
Scott just shrugs.
On the first hole, he hit an approach in which his ball skated along the edge of a bunker like it was Tony Hawk. It somehow trickled onto the green. Augusta doesn’t usually treat golfers like this.
“I think all the former champions feel [the goodwill here] here,” Scott said after a four-under 68 to start the tournament, three shots shy of the lead. “I think you even get good breaks from it.
“[But] I’ve always felt it’s the most nervous I am on a golf course … the first tee Thursday at the Masters. It’s the build-up. We haven’t played a major since last summer. We all know how special this place is for golfers and it’s the anticipation and nerves and competitive nerves, and it’s hard to get that under control.”
By the time he finally stubs his toe with his only bogey of the day on the last, he’s well in contention for the major which means more than any other to him (he even has the Masters soundtrack as a ringtone).
Williams is right when he says for Scott to be elevated from a very good to truly great golfer, he must win a second major. If it was to happen at Augusta, his legacy would be cemented. Jon Rahm, Scottie Scheffler, Rory McIlroy and Tom Kim will beat him before Father Time does.
As Mize and Sandy Lyle and Jose Maria Olazabal and Vijay Singh take their seemingly never-ending laps of honour each April (Lyle and Mize announced this will be their last Masters), it wouldn’t surprise to see Scott playing here for another 15 or 20 years. He certainly wants to.
Then, and only then, he might be ready to throw in the towel. Brown shirt and all.
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