We are fast approaching a situation in which Tiger Woods, even at 24, must merit serious assessment as one of the game's all-time great players. Indeed since he is now in his fourth full season as a professional, one could safely rate him as the best amateur matchplayer in golfing history. Heretical though it may seem to some people, that is to place him above the great Bobby Jones.
Perhaps the clearest pointer to changed times is to be found in attitudes towards the Grand Slam, be it Jones's so-called Impregnable Quadrilateral, or the modern model consisting of the four major professional championships.
We are told that from 1928 onwards, Jones had his sights set on the Grand Slam of the US Open, British Open, US Amateur and British Amateur in the same year. He clearly saw it as an attainable objective and was proved to be correct in 1930. Nowadays, it would be rejected as fantasy; not worthy of serious consideration.
Where the professional "Slam" is concerned, there is no doubt but that Jack Nicklaus thought about it. But because of the huge rise in competitive standards, nobody considered it to be realistic - until Master Woods entered the picture.
Jones won 13 major championships - four US Opens, three British Opens, five US Amateurs and one British Amateur. Woods captured six successive USGA titles - three successive US Juniors and three US Amateurs in-a-row. In the process, Woods won 18 successive matches, one ahead of compatriot Harvie Ward: Jones is some way down the list with 13.
A table of American matchplay percentages is even more interesting: 1, Woods 90.9 per cent (20 wins, two losses); 2, Jones 84.3 per cent (43-8); 3, W Lawson Little 84.0 per cent (21-4); 4, Nicklaus 82.8 per cent (24-5). But the real meat is to be found in the opposition Jones and Woods faced at amateur level.
In 1930, when Jones completed the Grand Slam by winning the US Amateur at Merion, there were 175 entrants. And there were never more than that number in any the 13 US Amateurs in which he competed between 1916 and 1930. Indeed the five championships he won had a total of only 802.
Woods, on the other hand, had to emerge from a field of 5,538 competitors when capturing the title for a third time in 1996. And during his three-year reign, the number of entrants totalled 15,914. It is also significant that neither Jones nor Nicklaus managed to win three successive titles.
Back in 1996 in the 36-hole final of the US Amateur, Steve Scott was five up on Woods after 11, but lost on the 38th. Small wonder that a shattered Scott was moved to remark afterwards: "I wouldn't have been happy until I had him 10 down or something. Only God knows what it takes to beat this guy."
Nicklaus said later: "He is the most fundamentally sound golfer I've ever seen, at almost any age." And despite what Gary Wolstenholme may feel about beating him in the 1995 Walker Cup, the records would suggest that Woods had no peer as an amateur matchplayer. However, for overall achievements as an amateur, Jones remains untouchable.
"Tracey was so involved in his golf, and it's very difficult for her to be out of the loop, now that the season has started again." Paul Azinger, on receiving a telephoned message from Payne Stewart's widow, congratulating him on his recent win.
While golfing in Mijas, on Spain's Costa de Sol last November, I had my first experience of satellite guidance in a golf buggy. It pinpointed the player's position on the course like a mobile course-planner and also suggested the most productive route to the green.
Against that background, we shouldn't be surprised to learn of an air-conditioned buggy making its debut at the PGA Show in Orlando last weekend. Described as "the Mercedes of golf carts", it's for the golfer who has everything, naturally.
At a cost of $16,000, the closed-in buggy is likely to find a strong market in the southern states of the US and in places like Palm Springs. But the encased cabin is also expected to make it attractive to coldweather golfers, for the protection it offers from chilly winds. Now if they would only invent an instant cure for that infernal slice . . .
Paraic O'Rourke has brought much honour to Kilkenny GC, where he has been a member since 1977. Yet as an Irish international and winner of three South of Ireland Championships, he admits with a typically hearty laugh: "No matter how long I'm down here, I'll never be considered a Kilkennyman."
As it happens, O'Rourke is proud of his Kildare roots and his introduction to golf as a caddie at Naas GC. But his involvement in Kilkenny golf is about to be strengthened through the new, Gowran Park Golf Club, which is scheduled to open in June of next year.
"It's set in 170 acres, in and around the racecourse, and work started last September," he said, in his capacity as chairman of the organising committee. Jeff Howes, who worked on Mount Juliet and recently completed an impressive upgrading of Fota Island, did the design. Gowran is a proprietary venture which is currently open for membership.
When Carol Semple Thompson made her ninth Curtis Cup appearance at Killarney in 1996, she set a new record for the US, beating the eight by Anne Sander. She also tied the record of nine caps held by Mary McKenna. And even then, Thompson's 15 wins and two halves from 28 matches was the most by an individual player since the series began in 1932.
Now, at 50, she is set to extend her record to 11 appearances when the biennial event is held at Ganton in June. Granted, she is holder of the US Senior Women's Amateur title. But the continued faith of the American selectors is especially commendable, given that her only rewards in the last two Curtis Cup encounters were two halved matches at Killarney.
Call it self-indulgence, but I can't resist a second little dip into Herbert Warren Wind's An Introduction to the Literature of Golf, which I wrote about here last week. It concerns a meeting which the author had with the inimitable Pat WardThomas, during the Walker Cup at St Andrew's in 1955.
After a runaway 10-2 win by the Americans, WardThomas despatched his report to the then Manchester Guardian and later rang the sports desk to check that everything was in order. Whereupon he was informed that there was room for four or five more words at the end of the piece.
On asking Ward-Thomas what he had done, the author was informed that the piece ended with a second look at Joe Conrad, who had been one of the two Americans who played in the eight singles and not won his match. The reporter then repeated his last sentence, to the best of his recollection.
It went: "And also indelible in one's mind was the picture of Conrad on the home green, as composed as ever in defeat."
And the extra words? Ward-Thomas asked the copytaker to change the full-point after defeat to a comma and to add "small, quiet, cheerful, brave." Rather pleased with his effort, he turned to Warren Wind and said: "Do you think that's a good touch?" Ah, for those gentler times.
This day in golf history . . . On February 12th 1953, Des Smyth was born. And by his own estimation, his finest golfing achievement came in the 1988 Dunhill Cup, when a semi-final victory over Nick Faldo and a last-gap win over Rodger Davis in the final, became crucial elements of a memorable Irish triumph.
Teaser: A player lifts his ball in a bunker after declaring it unplayable. Before selecting an option under Rule 28, he removes a loose impediment from the bunker. Since this action took place while his ball was lifted, i.e. it was not lying in the hazard, was the player in breach of Rule 13-4?
Answer: Yes. The prohibitions of Rule 13-4 apply when a ball is in a hazard or when a ball, having been lifted from a hazard, may be dropped or placed in the hazard. Under the unplayable ball rule, two of the player's options require him to drop a ball in the bunker. The player would incur the penalty even if he subsequently elected to drop a ball outside the bunker under Rule 28a.
