Tiger Woods

After Tiger Woods won the 2000 US Open at Pebble Beach, it took a while for the golfing world to grok the magnitude of his accomplishment. I wrote a column about it for New York Press and it still applies.

The Masters tournament begins tomorrow. Television coverage can be seen on the USA Network (Thursday and Friday) and on CBS (Saturday and Sunday). I have a sense that Tiger will dominate this tournament as he did the US Open at Pebble. He's been driving the ball long and straight. His short game is both technically sound and wonderfully imaginative. And he putts the Augusta greens as well as anyone ever has.

The best quote ever about golf was Tom Boswell's in a long ago column for the Washington Post. I can't remember his exact words, but the nut of it was: "it's not that the pros are better than your average club champ, it's that they're so much better." Updated, it's not that Tiger Woods is better than your average PGA Tour professional, it's that he's so much better.