Rory McIlroy hunting Tiger Woods at the Masters

They are getting younger and younger, aren’t they. Policemen? No, golfers. In 1997 Tiger Woods won the Masters when he had been a professional for eight months. As impressive as his 12-stroke victory was, there was admiration that he was only four months past his 21st birthday and 26 years younger than Tom Kite, who finished second.
When the Masters starts on Thursday there will be three talented competitors who are not yet 20. It would be rash to suggest that
Rory McIlroy, Danny Lee or Ryo Ishikawa could win the first major championship of the year, but if golf has tectonic plates, the events in Georgia next week could come to be regarded as a sign of them shifting, a glimpse of the generation from which Woods’s next challenger will emerge.
Leading the trio is McIlroy, 19. Whereas most golfers climb steadily up the world rankings, his ascent has been rapid. The young star from Holywood, near Belfast, the only teenager in the world’s top 50, took 18 months to break into that group and only three to move into the top 20. Now No 17, he has made such an impression on his first foray to the United States that a 69-year-old former champion rushed over to him the other day, stuck out his hand and said: “Rory, isn’t it? Hi, I’m Jack Nicklaus.”
Lee, 18, the South Korean-born New Zealander, became the youngest winner of the US Amateur last year and is the only one who has not turned professional. Yet do not describe his game as amateurish. The way Lee won the Johnnie Walker Classic in Perth, Australia, in February was impressive. Two behind after 54 holes, he had four birdies in the last six holes of his final round, including on the 17th and 18th, to snatch victory by one stroke, becoming the youngest winner of an event on the European Tour.
Then there is Ishikawa, 17, perhaps the most talented of all. Just eight months past his 15th birthday, the young man nicknamed Hanikami Oji — “Bashful Prince” — has won a professional tournament in Japan, his homeland. No one has broken into the world’s top 100 professionals at so tender an age. He is No 71.
If that were not enough to whet the appetite, there is more. Padraig Harrington won the Open at Royal Birkdale last July and followed that with victory one month later in the US PGA. The Irishman will drive down Magnolia Lane towards the wooden clubhouse at Augusta National next week knowing that he has a chance of winning a third straight major championship — a feat achieved only twice, by Ben Hogan in 1953 and Woods in 2000.
Watch out for a quintessential ploy as Harrington eyes up the “Paddy Slam”. He may report that he has injured himself or be playing so badly that his mother would not give him an outside chance. Harrington has form in this regard. He is a master in the art of relieving pressure on himself.
His victory as defending champion in last year’s Open came after he revealed on the eve of the event that he had injured a wrist so badly the previous weekend that he might have to pull out. At Oakland Hills in Michigan in August, he declared his first two rounds to be so bad as to be laughable — then, while everyone was wondering who else was going to capture the year’s last major championship, Harrington had successive rounds of 66 to win by two strokes.
There is still more — for example, the form of Woods, the world No 1, in the first major championship since his stunning victory in last year’s US Open. Woods won his fourteenth major despite his left knee being so badly injured that his playing partners could hear it crack as he walked. Last Sunday in Orlando, Florida, in the third event of his comeback after reconstructive surgery, Woods began the concluding round of the Arnold Palmer Invitational tournament five strokes behind the leader, Sean O’Hair. The way that Woods willed a 16-foot putt into the hole for a birdie on the 72nd hole and a one-stroke victory was remarkable.
The lesson was clear: Woods is back. But at Augusta he has a talented young trio and a determined Irishman on his case, as well as all the usual suspects, including Phil Mickelson, Sergio García and Vijay Singh. The Masters is always interesting; but this year more than ever.
Source:the times