After the emotion of Phil Mickelson's three shot victory at Augusta, whose mother and wife are both suffering from breast cancer, the attention naturaly still landed on the PGA's greatest and most notorious icon. Tiger found himself in the hunt through 63 holes of the Masters but a few costly back nine errors in the final round put him a few shots out of contention. These errors included a missed one foot tap in for par that he uncharacteristically slapped at only to see it lip out. Tiger, after 72 holes, finished at 11 under, five off the lead.
What troubled me was the post round interview with CBS's Peter Kostas, where Woods didn't tone down his incredibly competetive mindset saying that he was dissappointed for not winning after his five month hiatus. Part of me wants to believe that Tiger is in a constant winning mindset and he truly feels that he will win every tournament he enters (which most of the time he delivers), but during this Masters I found this hard to believe. He has been away from the game, letting the news of his wrongdoings simmer and his image as the posterboy for professional sports is in shreds. The cynical part of me says that Tiger was simply using this year's Masters for exposure, to remind the world that he will be coming back to the tour, and that people better get used to it. The fact that he finished tied for fourth was simply a bi-product of his attempt at exposure. Although this is a scary thought that a player who hasn't played a professional round in five months contended in the most important and prestigious tournament on the PGA tour, this is just a testament to why he is "arguably" considered the best to ever play the game. Did Tiger do this to improve his image? Was he approaching this tournament for the same reasons as he did pre-scandal?
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