AUGUSTA, Ga. -- History, legacy, tradition.
Those are the first the words out of the mouths of most professionals when the subject of the Masters is broached, for good reason, of course.
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| Tiger Woods is going to have to make a big move up that board to be in contention Sunday. (AP) |
After his second consecutive blah round at Augusta National, the world No. 1 stands seven strokes back and in a seven-way tie for 13th place, which means he has a mountain of numbers and a pile of prohibitive results to overcome to keep his Grand Slam bid from ending before it begins.
Forget the azaleas, dogwoods and stately pines. For Woods, his weekend road at Augusta is steeped and getting steeper, if you will.
"Seven back is really, on this golf course, under the conditions we're going to have coming up, you can make that up," he said.
If so, he'd be making up some fresh history. As the only major championship rooted in the same place each year, the Masters of the past serve as a fair precursor of the future. The club's trends and traditions, beyond mere green jackets, are more meaningful. For Woods, that's some decidedly bad news.
When Jack Nicklaus won the last of his six Masters titles in 1986, he was in 17th place after 36 holes. Since then, no player outside the top 10 at the Masters midpoint has rallied to win on the weekend.
In fact, of the 21 tournaments contested since Nicklaus' mega-moving comeback, the eventual winner has 19 times ranked in the top five or better after 36 holes -- including the past nine winners in a row.
Woods started his climb with two holes left to shoot 71, knocking his approach on the 17th to within two feet for an easy birdie, then making a memorable par save on the last after punching out from the trees into the adjoining 10th fairway. At least it's a start, right?
"It was nice to end up under par for the day, under par for the tournament," he said.
Still, Woods not only must shake off two days of middling play, but he must erase more than two decades of daunting data in the process. Of the four times Woods has won, he has never stood lower than fourth after 36 holes, so El Tigre himself has contributed to the thesis that Friday represented far more than a the halfway divide heading into the weekend.
Cheers might well up from the bottom of the grounds at Augusta, but, players on the leaderboard generally have not. For its reputation as a place where magic often happens on Sundays, huge leaps up the board have been extinct since Nicklaus shot 30 on the back nine in 1986 to win.
