Those of us on the back nine of our lives will probably never see another Tiger Woods. So we are left to search and settle for precious little consolation prizes like this one: The sight of a new boy king of golf matching the bygone legend in red, stroke-for-stroke, in making a complete mockery of one of the greatest theaters in sports.
Jordan Spieth is not going to be another Tiger Woods, if only because there isn't going to be another Tiger Woods. But that didn't mean, at 21, Spieth couldn't be the equal of the 21-year-old Woods in 1997, when the prodigy reduced Augusta National to a side-of-the-road pitch and putt and inspired one battered opponent, Jesper Parnevik, to warn tournament overlords that they'd better install Tiger tees 50 yards to the rear or "he's going to win the next 20 of these."
No active player was heard forecasting any such absurdity about Spieth, and Jack Nicklaus didn't predict that Spieth might someday compile more Masters titles than the 10 Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer combined to win. But make no mistake: Under a slate gray sky that never did rain on Spieth's parade, the young man followed his old man's pregame advice the same way Tiger had followed Earl Woods' 18 years back.
Holding a nine-shot lead after three rounds, Tiger listened as his father advised that he was about to play the hardest round of his life, and that he needed to be himself and keep his cool. Sunday morning, Shawn Spieth decided his son could use a similar pep talk. Shawn didn't want to bother Jordan last year in the hours before he lost his very first Masters to Bubba Watson, didn't want to say anything other than good luck, we love you, all that jazz.
But this time around, with his son protecting a four-shot lead, Shawn Spieth thought he had something necessary to say before Jordan made the short trip to Augusta National.
"I just thought it might help a little bit maybe to calm me, if not him," Shawn said, "to have a quick little conversation with him about what I thought was important. Generally it was, 'You know you're going to face some adversity out here today,' and he knew it. He knew it from last year. He's known it from other big moments, Ryder Cup, other big events he's had. It's a day when you don't hit it the way you want to, or you get an adrenaline rush and you're not quite sure how to manage that.
"Last year he wasn't
quite ready for that, and we just talked for a couple minutes about that
and the fact that this is the greatest game and, yeah, it's the
Masters. But it's still a game as opposed to something that is even more
critical in our world. I don't know if it helped, but he held it
together pretty well."