2001 Ad

Golf Digest, April, 2001 by Dave Kindred

Because elegantly mystifying and whimsical prose of the purplest sort dominated his time's sportswriting, a man named George Trevor once typed the words "Impregnable Quadrilateral." He hoped to suggest the difficulty of an assault on a four-sided fortress, for his subject was Bobby Jones' daring 1930 campaign to win golf's four major championships.

Win them, Jones did.

Then O.B. Keeler came to our linguistic rescue. Jones' Boswell called the four victories in a year the "Grand Slam."

Now, 70 years and more later, we come to another intersection of genius and history that causes us to reconsider the definition of I.Q., a k a the Grand Slam.

If Tiger Woods wins this Masters following his 2000 victories in the U.S. Open, the British Open and the PGA Championship, has he won the Grand Slam?

Sam Snead says no, firmly: "You've got to do it in the same year. That's what it has always been." Phil Mickelson says yes, grudgingly: "I probably would count it." PGA Tour Commissioner Tim Finchem says maybe, diplomatically: "I don't have a regulation anywhere that says what the Grand Slam is. That's for you guys [the media] and the fans to decide."

Woods says it might just be a Grand Slam: "Only because I'm the only one holding all four major championships at one time. Is it the easiest way? Yes. Of course, the hard way to get the Slam is to get all four titles in one year. Anyone can get hot at the end of the summer, win a couple majors and continue it the next year."

Do you agree with Tiger, that it would be a Grand Slam?

You bet.

How can you . . .

He'll have won all four, uninterrupted. Jack Nicklaus held three titles going to the '72 British Open. But a scheduling quirk made that possible. They played the PGA in February '71. And after not winning another major that year, he began '72 winning the Masters and U.S. Open. At the British in '72, nobody talked about a Grand Slam.

OK, but Tiger won't have won them all in the same year.

Who cares?

You heard Sam Snead.

A year is 12 months. Tiger will have done it in 10 months.

Don't get cute.

So we'll change the name.

To what?

From now on, it's the "Tiger Slam."

With Tiger Woods stamping greatness all over himself, with glorious Augusta National Golf Club as the stage, the 2001 Masters is golf's most eagerly awaited event since late September 1930. Robert Tyre Jones Jr. teed it up then for the U.S. Amateur Championship at Merion Cricket Club. He'd won that year's U.S. Open, British Open and British Amateur.

"Eighteen thousand hysterical historians came to Merion to see one man," says Sid Matthew, a Jones biographer. "After winning the two British tournaments, he'd come home to a ticker-tape parade in New York. He was a hero in an era of Charles Lindbergh and Admiral Richard Byrd. Now he had to finish the Grand Slam, which was his goal though he'd confided it to no one, by winning at Merion."

That, Jones did.

"Keep in mind," says Woods, the historian, "when he won, two of the events--the U.S. and British amateurs--were match play. That makes it all the more amazing."

Jones supplies the stage

Now, on the golf course Jones built, Woods has a chance to make more history of his own, and it's also amazing.

Only Jones and Woods ever entered a major championship having won the last three played. (When Ben Hogan won three majors in '53, the British Open qualifying overlapped with the PGA Championship, which Hogan bypassed. Hogan's run ended when he lost a playoff for the '54 Masters title.)

Only Jones and Woods ever separated themselves from competitors so completely as to be what psychologists call an "outlier," a person not just at the extreme end of the normal range, but something else altogether.

Such magical words, "only Jones and Woods." They're a signal we've stepped onto a field of dreams where anything is possible. "People came to see Jones because he energized them with the epic reach of his story," Matthew says. "And that's what Tiger is doing now. People want to see Herculean feats. As Jones metaphorically cleaned the Augean stables in a day, that's what they want from Tiger. As Jones did, Woods needs to set himself a Herculean task."

Other than acknowledgment that he hopes to win every time out, Woods gives the public a glimpse of particular goals only when the deeds are done.

At Pebble Beach last summer, after winning the U.S. Open by 15 shots, he said his Sunday goal had been "no bogeys." At St. Andrews, after winning the British Open by eight shots, he said his goal had been four rounds in the 60s. Both goals, achieved.

Now, might Woods break 60 at Augusta National? Yes, if he plays the par 5s six under and makes seven other birdies, that's 59. He won the '97 Masters at 270, a number previously beyond a mortal's grasp. Could he break that record by 10 shots? Yes, with 64-67-63-66.

For that matter, the best question in the wake of Woods' three straight major championships might be: Now that this Herculean figure has the hang of winning the big ones, will he ever lose again?

CBS Sports president Sean McManus, whose network carries the Masters, jests in truth when he says, "All this talk about 'Is it a Grand Slam?' will be a moot point, anyway, when Tiger wins the next four."