Master(s)work

 Scottie Sheffler slipped on the green jacket Sunday, because he played impenetrable golf for four days while the pack waited in vain for him to come back to it. He finished three strokes clear of a charging Rory McIlroy, whose 64 yesterday was too little, too late.

But Sheffler wasn't the guy who won the Masters.

He is golf's alpha dog so far in 2022, finishing atop the leaderboard Sunday for the fourth time so far this year.

But he wasn't the alpha dog of the weekend.

His rise has been startling to say the least, considering that three months ago he had yet to win a tournament as a PGA Tour professional.

But his rise was dwarfed at Augusta by that of another.

The guy who finished 47th, to be exact.

Who shot 13-over for the tournament, the worst Masters performance of his career by miles. Who shot 78-78 on the weekend, despite a perfect day for scoring on Sunday.

None of that mattered. 

What mattered, see, was not the 47th-place finish. It was the word "finish."

The guy we're talking about is Tiger Woods of course, and he won the Masters because he finished four rounds in four days in a major. This sounds exceedingly modest until you remember what happened to him 14 months ago. 

What happened was the car he was driving left the road at high speed, rolled and crushed his right leg so badly doctors thought they might have to amputate it. Instead, they pinned it back together with enough hardware to set off metal detectors in Beirut. A lot of folks thought that was the end of him as a golfer; as recently as a month ago, even Woods himself wondered if playing the Masters was a pipe dream.

Once he decided to play, the same number of folks thought there was no way he'd make the cut -- or, if he did, that he would be able to play all four rounds. Among those folks was the guy driving this Blob.

Of course, then he went out, shot 71-74 the first two rounds, and made the cut. He ran out of gas after that and finished on fumes, but he finished. For four days, on his metal-shop leg, he walked a course that has a lot more changes in elevation to it than you'd guess from watching on TV.

Nonetheless, he walked it. And played his shots. And finished what he started.

Now, he says he's planning on playing The Open at St. Andrews in July. And maybe the PGA next month and the U.S. Open in June, though he's not sure about those two.

I don't know about you. But at this point, I wouldn't put a dime down against him.