Woulda, coulda, shoulda

What a wild Masters!  I will admit I was rooting for Tiger to win it.  And, if he hadn't made the PERFECT approach shot on the 15th on Friday, there's a good chance he would be standing with his 15th major championship trophy.

Most people who lose a tournament may be able to point to one TERRIBLE hole, or one TERRIBLE shot that went astray and resulted in a score for that hole that took them out of contention.

In Tiger's case, he can point to one PERFECT shot that had the same effect.  Hitting his third shot to the par 5, 15th hole on Friday, he hit the base of the flag stick, right above the hole.  The ball ricocheted backwards, and landed in the pond that surrounds the green.  Forced to take a drop, he made virtually an identical shot again, but instead of hitting the pin, he hit the green, landing less than 2 feet from the hole.

Had that been his first approach shot, he would have scored a 4.  As it was, coming after a drop, it translated into a 6.  But later on, during an interview with the press, Tiger described what happened, and how he was careful to drop his ball a bit further away from the initial point of the ball (so he wouldn't drop the ball in his own divit).  Apparently, that's a sin that would normally result in disqualification.  But, since nobody noticed it during the match, he was instead assessed a 2-stroke penalty and was allowed to continue.

Instead of scoring a 4 on that perfectly played hole, he carded an 8.  Tiger lost the Masters by that exact 4 stroke margin.

But, there was another consequence for that shot.  Had Tiger scored a 4 on that 15th hole and not played the remainder of the round in a bit of a funk, there's a good chance he would have ended the day in sole possession of first place.  And that would have meant the cut line would have been at +3 instead of +4.

That one-stoke difference in the cut line allowed the amazingly talented 14-year old Chinese golfer Tianlang Guan to make it into the weekend.  He beat, by more than two whole years, the age of the youngest Masters participant to make the cut.  Just imagine what stories this grade eight student will have to tell his classmates when he returns to school in China!