No. 14, 405-yard par 4: Driver, 5-iron for Hogan. Driver, pitching wedge for Tiger.
No. 15, 500-yard par 5 (with wa- ter in front): Driver, 4-iron lay up, wedge for Hogan. Driver, pitching wedge for Tiger.
No. 16, 170-yard par 3: Six-iron for Hogan. Nine-iron for Tiger.
No. 17, 400-yard par 4: Driver, 7-iron for Hogan. Three-wood, sand wedge for Tiger.
No. 18, 405-yard par 4: Driver, 5-iron for Hogan. Driver, sand wedge for Tiger.
If you're counting, that comes to wedges on 11 of the 18 holes for Tiger.
You may wonder about the uten- sils he used to do all that. Mostly the same ones he used to win his three U.S. Amateur titles, his NCAA Championship, and his three tour stops since last October. To walk you through his bag:
Cobra driver, 9-degree loft. Titleist 3-wood. Mizuno 2-iron through pitch- ing wedge. Two Cleveland Classic sand wedges, a 56-degree and a 60- degree. Titleist putter by Scotty Cameron, which looks like a Ping but isn't. All-steel shafts, folks. No graphite, no titanium. And a three- piece Titleist Professional 90 ball, if you're curious.
At the start of the year, British bookmakers had put the odds of Ti- ger winning the Grand Slam this year at 5,000 to 1. Panicked at the possibility of losing almost $2 million if the bet comes in at the U.S. Open (Congres- sional), British Open (Troon) and PGA (Winged Foot), several bookies dropped the price to 66 to 1. "I think it can be done," Tiger said. "Who knows?''
"All I want is a green jacket," he kept saying after he took the 36-hole lead by three, then the 54-hole lead by nine. But he got much more. Along with entering the first-name category of the massive celebrity— Ike, Elvis, Madonna, Frank, Cher, that bunch—he collected his fourth major at the tender age of 21, and nobody else has ever done that. To put it in better perspective, Jack Nicklaus had only two at the same age, and Bobby Jones had only one.
Changing of the guard: Tiger slips on his green jacket with a hand from Nick Faldo.
And then there were the records. Among them:
• His four-foot par putt on the final hole gave him an 18-under total of 270 to break the 72-hole record, by one stroke, that had been held by Nicklaus (1965) and Raymond Floyd (1976).
• His 201 after 54 tied Floyd's tournament record.
• His mind-boggling 12-stroke victory margin was the largest of the modern age in a major champion- ship. It's topped only by the 13- stroke margin with which Old Tom Morris won the British Open at Prestwick in 1862, which happened to be at 36 holes when only four peo- ple owned a set of clubs. And it's only equaled by Young Tom Morris at Prestwick in 1870—when only eight people played golf.
• His victory tied him with Jerry Pate, now of television, as the only two competitors who have ever won in their first professional major. Pate did it at the Atlanta Athletic Club when he captured the '76 U.S. Open. Nicklaus won in his second major as a professional at the '62 U.S. Open at Oakmont, if you're wondering.
If you also happen to be wonder- ing if anything else of note happened in the '97 Masters, it can be stated in one paragraph:
Arnold Palmer finished 36 holes despite recent surgery, and nobody cared what he shot; Nicklaus made the cut at age 57 when such other dignitaries as Faldo, Norman and Phil Mickelson didn't; Tom Watson made a putt, and, against all odds, Faldo stayed around to slip Tiger into his green jacket.
At first it was a funny old Masters, as it sometimes is.
As opening days go, Thursday was one of the better ones this time, start- ing with how the golf course played. The screams and complaints of the young whippersnappers both inside and outside the ropes were drowned out only by the giggles and laughter from some of us codgers who have been around a while, who have seen the Augusta National play far tougher in days gone by.
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