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 We checked in with some Southland golf professionals to get their reactions to the tournament, Woods and where golf’s top player goes from here. Tom McCray was on a family trip to Mammoth Mountain on Masters weekend, so the Strawberry Farms Golf Club head professional wasn’t near a TV on the Sunday when Woods and DiMarco had the golf world spellbound. But that doesn’t mean he wasn’t following the action. “The kids were piled into the minivan watching their Game Cube while I was in the front seat on my cell phone calling the course for reports,” McCray said. “I told them the minute Woods made his final putt to watch the driving range fill up. Within five minutes, that’s what happened.” Eddie Merrins, a professional golfer since the early 1950s and Bel-Air Country Club’s head pro since 1962, has attended eight Masters and watched nearly every round for more than 40 years. Like most people, he appreciated “the great theater” of the moment, “which is only natural because in Augusta National Golf Club you have the world’s greatest golf stage.” Merrins compared the last-minute drama of this year’s event to Mickelson’s win last year, but said no Masters compares to Jack Nicklaus’ victory in 1986. “That was like Rocky versus the rest of the world,” Merrins said. “The most renowned golfers in the game all seemed to have a chance to win that one, but Nicklaus passed them all, one by one one.” While many viewers may have conceded the tournament to Woods when television coverage picked up the start of the delayed final round with Woods holding a three-stroke lead, Merrins never thought it was over. “I never concede any victory because I’ve seen too much golf in my day and too many things can happen,” Merrins said. “I’ve seen great players like Nicklaus lose to Trevino, and Hogan lose to Snead, or Palmer lose to Nicklaus. Yet, sometimes the favorite doesn’t win. And that’s why the game is so great.” Yet, all things being equal, it seems that Woods is the one golfer in the field who pulls out the miraculous — like his epic chip-in on the 16th hole, which Merrins says, “under the circumstances is one of the greatest shots you’re ever going to see.” Even though every golf course operator knows that nothing spikes interest in the game like Woods, Jeff Barber, a teaching pro at Griffith Park Golf Course who caddied for his grandfather, Miller Barber, in the 1994 Masters, was pulling for DiMarco. “I was absolutely pulling for him,” Barber said. “He led it all week and then basically puked all over himself in the third round, and to watch somebody take the lead away from him was tough. But he hung in there and then when Tiger bogeyed the 17th and the 18th, I’m thinking, ‘holy mackerel, maybe he does have a chance.’” But Woods made the shots when he had to, giving local golfers a chance to cheer on a local guy, even though he now lives in Florida. Southland golfers also had another reason to cheer the end of the Masters: there was still plenty of daylight left to grab some clubs. “The Masters captures the attention of golfers like nothing else and once it’s done on Sunday you see people excited to test their skills,” said Tim Gardner, head professional at CrossCreek Golf Club in Temecula. “So even though you don’t see many golfers playing during the Masters, it gets quite busy before and aftewards.” Gardner wouldn’t be surprised if Woods eclipses Nicklaus’ record of 18 major championships sooner rather than later. “I think it boils down to the fact that he’s been there before and he knows what to expect and he really likes it,” Gardner said. “He enjoys being under those pressure circumstances and I’m not sure there’s another player I’ve ever seen who likes it more, or rises to the occasion better.” McCray agrees. “I grew up in San Francisco and I see in Tiger the same thing I saw in Joe Montana,” he said. “When the pressure is on and things need to happen he sees what needs to happen. Where a lot of other golfers try to make it happen, he sees it and does it. You can teach golfers how to be better in their mental game, but you can’t teach that. That’s phenomenal.” Merrins agrees that no one rises to the moment like Woods. But the salty veteran knows a thing or two about golf and he says that Woods will find winning his next nine majors much more difficult than the first nine. “He’s halfway there and the mountain is 18 or more,” Merrins said. “But he still has a lot of climbing to do. The rest is uphill. It will not be easy.” n |
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