For Masters Players, a Big Stage Swells When Woods Is in the Group

AUGUSTA, Ga. — Joaquín Niemann couldn’t hear his caddie.

He had made one other Masters Event. He had navigated the thicket of spectators. Now, because the 23-year-old Chilean stood at Augusta Nationwide Golf Membership’s first tee on Thursday, Gary Matthews, who was carrying Niemann’s bag, might as properly have been anyplace else.

Such is life enjoying alongside Tiger Woods.

It was solely weeks in the past that Woods, whose docs weighed amputating his leg after a automotive wreck final 12 months, appeared sure to overlook the Masters. However his resolution to play within the match, his first skilled competitors since November 2020, immediately remodeled how spectators would comply with the motion — and any participant accompanying the five-time Masters winner at Augusta Nationwide.

Woods’s presence in a pairing or group has lengthy outlined the enjoying setting round his slice of nearly any match, together with his followers, and very often simply the curious, providing up a barrage of cheers, commentary, cameras, bustle and scrutiny. The highlight, it appears, solely barely tilts away from him, if it does in any respect.

And so the chaos, or no matter counts for chaos on a golf course, could make Fred {Couples} — a Masters champion, as soon as the world’s top-rated golfer and a hero to child boomer duffers — look extra like an afterthought than a number one man. It will possibly render Stewart Cink, a British Open champion and one of many most interesting golfers of his period, a merely thrilling bonus, or Francesco Molinari, additionally a British Open winner, one thing lower than a pairing’s marquee title.

“It’s manner totally different once you play with Tiger anyplace, and Augusta Nationwide isn’t any totally different,” stated Cink, who has usually had an up-close view of Woods on the Masters.

Woods, who earned the primary of his Masters inexperienced jackets 25 years in the past, has lengthy commanded one of many largest Augusta galleries, with another champions sure {that a} “Tiger roar” by the pines merely sounds totally different than cheering for different gamers. And with Phil Mickelson, certainly one of Woods’s rivals for consideration and affection, absent from this 12 months’s Masters, Woods is much more the participant with the best following round Augusta this week.

The frenzy of this notably intense week started properly earlier than Niemann, Woods and Louis Oosthuizen discovered themselves peering down the 445-yard No. 1 on Thursday. {Couples}, who performed in his thirty seventh Masters this week, joined Woods for a pair of apply rounds and was left agog on Monday, the primary day the course was open to spectators.

“I’ve by no means seen something prefer it,” he marveled. {Couples} stated he discovered a solution to get to the primary tee the place Woods’s followers “had been solely 4 deep.”

He added, “They needed to see the massive man, and so they noticed him, and so they noticed good golf. He will get that right here on a regular basis.”

However frequency doesn’t essentially make the state of affairs simpler for others pursuing their very own ambitions.

“The most important factor is simply the vitality within the crowd and the depth of the reactions and the scrambling for place,” stated Cink, whose finest end at Augusta was a tie for third in 2008. “There’s quite a lot of motion on the market.”

Cink stated that Woods had routinely tried to maintain it a good struggle by permitting others to complete enjoying a gap earlier than he did, maintaining the gang in place just a bit whereas longer.

“Once you play with him, it’s busy, it’s noisy,” stated Molinari, who received the 2018 British Open at Carnoustie when he was paired with Woods and, the subsequent 12 months, performed with Woods on Sunday at Augusta. “I don’t suppose it makes an enormous distinction if it’s right here or elsewhere.”

Woods, mighty as he’s, has solely a lot management.

On Thursday, the spectators started to amass across the first tee field lengthy earlier than Woods emerged from the clubhouse to start out his match. A drone flew overhead. No less than one man shouted “let’s go Tiger!” no less than twice, although it was laborious to inform in a crowd that appeared about 25-deep in locations so folks might see Woods (or possibly simply the highest of his cap) as he took his first shot.

Niemann and Oosthuizen obtained well mannered, restrained welcomes from the gang, which began to interrupt up as quickly as Woods, who hit first, completed swinging his driver, all the higher to get a head begin down the green or to the second inexperienced, to see Woods once more.

The din quieted sufficient on later holes that Niemann stated he might, ultimately, hear Matthews as he performed his solution to a three-under-par 69. He stated he had even come to seek out pleasure within the monumental crowds.

“They had been all the time telling me to be sure to attempt to end earlier than Tiger, that manner the folks don’t begin transferring,” Niemann stated. “However they had been actually respectful, so it was an satisfying spherical.”

Daniel Berger recommended {that a} worse destiny than being paired with Woods was enjoying simply in entrance of him.

“In case you are one or two forward of him, then it’s all the time a wrestle with folks attempting to run as much as see him,” stated Berger, who debuted on the Masters in 2016.

Padraig Harrington, one other British Open winner who has performed with Woods, had the same evaluation.

“It’s very tough should you’re the group forward of him,” he stated. “It’s very, very tough as a result of the crowds are watching him and so they’re transferring on to see him. Once you’re enjoying with him 20 deep, you possibly can’t hear a factor as a result of there’s a lot happening.”

However Harrington, who has received two Opens and a PGA Championship, had no complaints about life with Woods as a enjoying accomplice.

“He’s really one of many best guys to play with over time,” he stated. “He’s a quite simple man to play with. He performs golf. He says ‘good shot’ solely once you hit a great shot. There isn’t any messing round, no garbage about it.”

Follow rounds are, after all, much less pressurized, and {Couples}, who has lengthy been near Woods and is now within the twilight of his profession, signaled that he generally performs the courtroom jester. It appeared that manner this week when Woods performed with {Couples}, who received at Augusta in 1992, and Justin Thomas, who was born the subsequent 12 months and was 3-years-old when Woods first received the Masters.

“I like to inform them tales, however normally on the tees it’s very quiet and I allow them to do their factor, and as quickly as we step down the green there will likely be a narrative about this man or that man or me or Tiger,” {Couples}, who stated that Woods and Thomas make him hit final, recalled this week. “Then we chuckle till we get to a ball.”

The crowds are all the time thick, and all the time watching, and all the time bouncing. However {Couples} stated there’s a good thing about enjoying with Woods and Thomas, all the theatrics and distractions apart.

“It’s good as a result of they solely wish to play 9 holes,” {Couples}, 62, stated. “I’m nice with 9 holes.”