1997

The '97 Masters may be second only to the '86 Masters in amount of coverage. That said, here are a few thoughts:

1. Tiger went 40-30 for his opening round 70. 30 on the back of Augusta is impressive at any time, but in the first round of your first major? After going 40 on the front nine? When you've already been heralded as the second coming? Insane.

2. If you've watched the highlights from '97 recently (they've been on all week on the Golf Channel), the course looks completely different. First of all there wasn't any rough. And second, the guys are hitting shots from drastically different places now than they were then, especially on 11 and 15. A lot of people will say this is all because of Tiger and that's true, to an extent. The real reason for these changes (and another reason why '97 is so significant) is that it was the first year where technology started to really change the game. Consider that in 1996, when Tiger defeated Davis Love III to win in Vegas, Davis was using a persimmon driver! The following year, I doubt you would have found any persimmon woods at Augusta. So, '97 represented the perfect storm of a great new talent and improving golf technology that would force Augusta National to add 550 yards in 9 years.

3. Now my previous point was all about the ramifications for golf that I have already decried as secondary to drama in my post about 2001, and it's true that 1997 lacked traditional Sunday-at-The-Masters drama. But anytime someone makes an entrance like Tiger's in 1997, traditional drama gets thrown out the window. This was drama of the more ceremonial variety. The anointing of a new boy genius. It was incredible to watch Tiger beat Jack's record and so utterly destroy the field. One of the most emphatic announcements of greatness in the history of sport.

A couple other thoughts:
-Crazy to see how skinny Tiger was back then, and how long his swing really was. In his press conference yesterday he talked about winning that tournament and that he really didn't have a lot of shots in his bag back then. Of course, he didn't three putt, there was no rough and he was hitting wedges into every par-5, so he had ENOUGH shots to get it around.
-The third round was the first professional example of Tiger using something an opponent says to motivate him. In this case, Monty shot his mouth off and was demolished. Same thing happened to Stephen Ames at Match Play a couple of years ago, and on down the line.