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Woods has become such a spray hitter off the tee, and such a consistent winner in spite of it, Peter Jacobsen recently called him "the second coming of Seve Ballesteros."
You can't help but wonder, even though we've all been wondering it for years: How long can Woods keep winning like that? Don't the must-make putts eventually stop dropping? Doesn't someone younger finally refuse to buckle in his presence?
Aura is obviously unquantifiable, because to look at his stats you can't figure out how Woods is still winning. He had played only eight measurable rounds coming into the Masters — the Accenture Match Play does not count, statistically speaking — and was hitting just 60.71% of fairways (103rd on Tour), and 61.11% of greens in regulation (tied for 160th). He was 56th in putting. How did he have a W and a top-10 coming into this Masters? How is he still on track to break Jack Nicklaus's record 18 major victories — 14 and counting — albeit maybe a few years later than we'd predicted?
Here's another burning question, given Woods's well-chronicled intolerance for mediocrity, and his relentless work ethic: Will he blow up his swing under coach Hank Haney and start over? He's completely retooled his action more than once, and very successfully. Fighting the both-way misses, he may decide to do it again.
But check the record, you say. The man has won six majors since 2005, which is hardly cause for firing your coach. But for Woods, that doesn't matter. He won a bunch of majors under Butch Harmon, too, and by as many as 15 strokes.
Could Woods begin to find the fairway if he slows down his swing down?
"It probably would be even wilder if he did that," Riggs said. "If it's crooked going fast, it's going to be crooked going slow."
So you have to wonder: What will Tiger do next?
That's usually a question reserved for Mickelson, the other half of this vexing equation. The winner of two tournaments already in 2009 as he came into this week, Mickelson went on a crowd-pleasing run on the front nine Sunday, electrifying the massive gallery of patrons who gravitated to the dream pairing.
But with Mickelson, who boomed his drives past Tiger's all day, there's always a, "Yeah, but ..." As teacher Riggs puts it, "Phil's just a weird guy. He's very competitive, he's got a brilliant short game, but he seems to always make mistakes." Big mistakes. On Sunday, we kept looking for the killer, the one he wouldn't be able to recover from. For a moment we thought it was the terrible pull-hook drive he hit on the par-4 ninth hole.
But Mickelson hit a low screamer through a narrow gap, and the ball trickled into the left greenside bunker. He splashed out to five feet above the hole, and made the tricky downhill, right-to-left par putt. He'd equaled the Masters record with a front-nine 30.
But it couldn't last. Even playing his best, and with arguably the greatest player of all time — Mickelson has always maintained that playing with Tiger helps him focus — the fickle Phil seemed destined to do something screwy. On Sunday, it was the 9-iron into the drink on 12, the hole that jump-started Mickelson's run to his first green jacket in 2004. There was some discussion between Mickelson and caddie Jim (Bones) Mackay about how hard to hit the 9-iron, and at one point Mickelson said, "I got it." But he seemed to hit it heavy; he didn't have it.
"I just yanked it, just quit on it," Mickelson admitted, "and the ball went dead right."
Still, Phil flashed a last bit of magic. After getting a shot back with a birdie on the par-5 13th hole, he stung a 187-yard second shot to set up a four-foot eagle putt on 15. But the airtight game he used to conquer the front nine sprung another leak, as he shoved the eagle putt left, and tapped in for birdie to get back to 10-under, even par on the back.
A bogey out of the fairway bunker on 18 left him at nine under, one better than Tiger (and don't think that Phil doesn't know it).
The massive crowds on the grounds got what they came to see, the result notwithstanding. How will Tiger and Phil, these two incandescent talents, react to failure? Will they take Sunday as an indictment of their games, or a sign that they're on the right track?
"It is an incredibly demanding golf course," Riggs said, "and if you're not functioning on all cylinders, you're going to struggle to close the deal. It's not the Shell Houston Open or Bay Hill. It is tough to do. [Greg] Norman never won it. He was No. 1 in the world. We all get spoiled, thinking they're going to do it every year."
Clearly they're not. We know. But don't even pretend to look away as they try.
