There's nothing 'grand' about Tiger's Augusta foray

Nobody was playing better than Tiger coming into this 2008 Masters. Then, suddenly, he lost it.

And he lost the Masters, unable to produce on demand.

"If someone shot something in the 60s," Woods said of a final round when he shot 72, "we could have put pressure on Trevor. I didn't do my part."

Without a pulled putt here, a pushed drive there, Tiger would have had another green jacket and we would have had a wonderful ride toward history.

His putting, the best part of Tiger's game, deserted him. He said he started "dragging the blade," not releasing it as normal.

"Out here," he said of greens that roll and tumble and are slick as a linoleum floor, "if you're not starting the ball perfectly on line, you're not going to make any putts."

He made putts. He just didn't make the ones we, and he, expected him to make.

"Nobody putts better than Tiger Woods," Steve Stricker said the other day. "That's his greatest strength."

But Sunday, he missed a three-footer for a par on No. 4 and a four-footer for a par on 13. His strength was his weakness.

"I didn't quite have it this week," Woods conceded. "For some reason, on the longer putts I was great. On the shorter putts, I kept dragging it."

Once again Tiger failed to win a major when he wasn't at least tied for the lead going into the last round. It's a mystery. It's also golf.

Sam Snead never could win a U.S. Open. Arnold Palmer never could win a PGA. So far, Tiger can't win a major tournament coming from behind after 54 holes.

"I figured if I played the last seven holes probably 3-under par I might be in it," said Woods. "But I couldn't."

He played them even par, with a birdie on 18. He moved up from fifth to second. That wasn't good enough.

Not for Tiger. Not for a sporting world hungry for the excitement he would have brought with a victory.

A Grand Slam? That's up to Immelman now. You can't win all four majors unless you win the first one. Which 28-year-old Trevor Immelman has done.

Woods hasn't won the first one, the Masters, in three years now. And so the dream perishes. It was great while it lasted.

Tiger said on the course he never considered the Slam, only the job at hand.

"You have bad weeks," reminded Tiger, who doesn't have them very often, "and you have good weeks, and certainly this week was not one of my best."