After my last posting (see "Tiger Woods, the madness" -- stage right), a friend pointed out I had made a blunder. (Yes, believe it or not, even a low-life such as myself has a few friends.)
When comparing Tiger Woods' scores to the leader, and how far back he was after the first two rounds, I screwed up the numbers. That's odd, given that math was one of the few things I did well at in school. Trig, analytic geometry, even four semesters of calculus in college while pursuing my engineering degree-- no prob.
[Idle thought. Is it just me, or have you never used algebra even once since you got out of school? So what's the point of teaching how to solve those silly equations?]
But evidently I never got simple addition down pat.
After the second round of the Masters, I looked at leader Patrick Reed's score of nine under par, compared it to Woods' score of four over par, and....
Only a doofus like me could add nine to four and come up with Eldrick being fifteen shots behind. So yeah. I'm an idiot. I'll own that.
Thing is, after now three rounds having been played, Tiger is yet to break par on the course -- for any of them. After an even par 72 today, he remains at four over.
Meanwhile, many others have been killing it. Fifty four hole leader Reed shot a very impressive five under 67 in the third round, to zoom to 14 under par. He's three shots clear of...
Rory McIlroy, who who blistered the course with a 7-under 65. (The Masters is the only "major" the young Irishman has yet to win to accomplish the career "grand slam". And he's certainly in contention for this one.)
As did Ricky Fowler.
Jon Rahm, the young Spaniard that has taken the tour by storm of late, fired a 66.
As did Tommy Fleetwood, another up and coming star.
This, while dear Tiger could only manage a ho-hum round of even par 72, his best so far, as he watched so many others basically lap him.
So, here we go with the math again. Given Reed is at 14 under, and Woods is at 4 over, my colossal Jethro brain does the ciphering and comes up with -- an eighteen shot differential. That's the equivalent of losing by a whopping six strokes every day so far.
Further, out of the 53 players to make the cut, Eldrick Tont has only been able to stay ahead of eleven of them. He's mired in a tie for 40th place, and will be getting an early Sunday tee-off time, so he'll be out of the way before the contenders come marching through. That is, if I can count correctly, no given (see the title of this post above).
For those that wanted, NEEDED Tiger to come roaring back as a force on tour, that ought to pretty much put to rest any such delusions.
All along, the hype has been growing. Tiger this, and Tiger that. See him building towards this year's Masters. See his legions of faithful, if hopelessly naive, fans and media eagerly anticipating this would be a re-coronation of King Tiger back on his throne.
Well, maybe another type of "throne" is where he more appropriately belongs. The kind with the handle you reach around with your right hand to flush when you're done doing your business every day. There he can ponder how and why, at what was supposed to be the apex of his latest "comeback", he's floundering around a whopping 18 shots behind.
And it will probably get a lot worse by the time the final round is over. Could he go for 25? Or maybe he'll pull out again, citing a mysterious injury, to avoid the embarrassment.
This is what happens when the young stud "big boys" show up with their A game at a course like Augusta National, and an aging has-been tries to compete with them.
It can get ugly.
And so it has, at least for Eldrick. How much uglier before it's all over remains to be seen.
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