AUGUSTA, Ga. — Tiger Woods is missing from this year’s Masters, and so are all the people we once expected to replace him.
Rory McIlroy, often called Woods’s heir apparent, was an afterthought Saturday who bolted from the grounds of Augusta National Golf Club before the leaders had pulled into the parking lot to begin the third round.
Phil Mickelson, Woods’s longest-tenured rival, is home in San Diego after two plodding rounds. Adam Scott, the defending Masters champion, whose swing resembles the old Tiger’s, disappeared from the leader board Saturday after bogeying three of his first five holes. Sergio García, who as a young lad was supposed to nip at an aging Tiger’s heels, did not make the cut.
But maybe we have had it all wrong about who will supplant Woods as the world’s best golfer. Maybe it will not be a golfer born in the 1970s or 1980s. Maybe we should be thinking younger. It could be someone who listens to the talk of Woods’s onetime dominance and rolls his eyes the way he does when his grandfather talks about Elvis.
Maybe the golfer who displaces Woods one day will be so young he will call him Mr. Woods, because that’s how he refers to all his golfing elders on the PGA Tour — which means almost everyone.
Maybe it will be someone like Jordan Spieth, born in the summer of 1993 and now tied for the third-round lead of the Masters.