Tiger

When the crowd erupted as Tiger's eagle putt dropped on 13 yesterday my first thought was, "That's an Augusta roar." Year in and year out at Augusta, until they made the course overly penal, that's what we expected - eagles, thrills, and roars from the crowd that could be heard from one end of the course to the other. I see in the Washington Post this morning that Tom Boswell thought the same thing. And after the a string of extremely entertaining Opens - 1999 at Pinehurst, 2000 at Pebble, 2002 at Bethpage, 2004 at Shinnecock, and 2006 at Winged Foot, are we now looking at a future where The Masters and The U.S. Open switch positions in the public mind: The Masters as the tournament that leads to boring, plodding, middle of the green, two-putts and make your par kind of golf, the Open where conditions allow for thrills and eagles, along with the double-bogies? I can't say so just yet, but a few more years of this and perhaps so. At any rate, the USGA has been doing a bang-up job for awhile now, which is something I'd never thought I'd say.

What I can say is that Tiger has to be considered the overwhelming favorite today. If not for the knee, he'd be a shoe-in. Lee Westwood is a solid golfer who could throw in a nice 67 or 68 and beat Tiger, but for anyone else to win I think Tiger has to falter. And I don't expect that, knee or no knee. The man has a knack, like no one else ever has, to get done what needs to be done in order to win - yesterday was just the umpteenth example. I think he'll be hoping to shoot around par today - not taking too many chances, balancing out the inevitable U.S. Open bogies with a few birdies on the five pars - and watch while everyone else disintegrates around him, i.e. the Nicklaus major championship strategy. Right now, and only because of the knee, I give Tiger an 80% chance of victory, Westwood a 15% chance, and the rest of the field a 5% chance.