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Eagle shot saves day for Woods

• Tiger Woods negates two bogeys by eagling the 15^th hole to finish the first round of the Masters at even par.

Scott Chancey

AUGUSTA — To understand Tiger Woods the golfer, one must understand Tiger Woods, the competitor.

Losing is not fit for his system.

His face turns as red as his shirt on Sundays at the most remote thought of it. It’s of little surprise that he proclaimed earlier this year that a single-year grand slam for him is “easily within reason.”

Just when his first round of the Masters seemed headed for a downhill turn Thursday, posting consecutive bogeys on the 13th and 14th holes, he approached the 15th with the same tenacity that he approached a John Smoltz fastball during a recent spring training outing he spent with the Braves: He kept his eye on the ball.

Woods simply eagled the hole, chipping in from behind the green for a round-saving eagle.

“Yeah, it was a pretty easy little pitch,” Woods said. “It was straight uphill. The ball was sitting up. It was pretty soft underneath there and just had to carry it far enough, and it went in.”

And in an instant, Woods was back in Grand Slam form.

“Yeah, it’s good,” Woods said. “I’m right there. With the weather supposed to getting more difficult as the week goes on, I’m right there.”

Whether Woods holds a golf club or baseball bat, nothing seems impossible to him — especially after standing up to Smoltz’s fast ball.

“It was fun,” Woods said of his batting experience against Smoltz. “It was fun It’s one of those things that you’ve always — I always wanted to do. My dad (Earl) played baseball and I grew up playing baseball, but not to face probably a future Hall of Famer in Smoltz and having to get up there and have him throw you all of his stuff and to make contact and drive one up with the middle a little bit, that was pretty cool.”

Woods’ father, who died of cancer in 2006 helped mold Woods into the type of player who could steer Thursday’s back nine from potential disaster.

“I asked my dad to do that to me,” Woods began, “to make me a tougher golfer, to make me a tougher person; so he did. He put me through the same stuff he had to go through in Special Forces, all the psychology of it. It was fun to me. It was frustrating to me at first because I didn’t understand how to deal with it but I just had to figure it all out. He used to pull all the little tricks.”

Nowadays, Woods draws on that more than ever, even if he admits he’s nervous.

“Oh, you’re always nervous every time you tee it up,” Woods said. “If you’re not nervous, that’ means you don’t care, so why play? I care about what I shoot and how I play. I take great pride in what I do. So yeah, you’re going to be a little nervous, and that’s a good thing.”

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