Tiger Woods won the Masters at Augusta National last week, and he showed some good professional grit in getting there. He was victim to some insufferable bad-beats in the first round and managed to work himself pretty deep into the leaderboard. Where else but Augusta could the #1 ranked player in the world putt past the hole, off the green and into a creek. By the 4th round he was 3 strokes ahead of Chris DiMarco, who had led the field the entire tournament. DiMarco gets credit, he gave up ground in the 3rd round but played excellently in the final 18 to force a play-off in the 19th hole (he shot par, Tiger birdied and that was that).
Although I used to think Tiger was all hype I now have respect for him as a skilled player at the top of his sport. Like so many other things in my life, I compare golf to poker (see Poker, Golf and the PPT). I suppose Tiger coming back from a major deficit to best the field is a lot like a seasoned poker pro keeping their head straight after a few outdraws and parlaying a short-stack up to the win. Albeit there are differences between golf and poker, but don't tell me there's no luck in golf. Tiger's bad breaks in the first round seemed to karmically payoff in the final round - he hit a couple of tee shots that could have easily required penalty strokes but received good bounces off of trees, etc. On the 16th hole Tiger played a chip shot down a monster break in the green and the ball wobbled its way next to the hole and fell after a dramatic pause. On the 18th hole DiMarco chipped from about 20 feet and also very nearly found the hole. Had his shot gone in he would be wearing the jacket. In each one of those cases neither player was a "favorite" to make their respective shots, but Tiger got the break and DiMarco didn't. However, in the end the statistically superior player triumphed, and that makes my sense of mathematical justice happy.
