The Coveted Green Jacket

Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson don’t make a habit of playing practice rounds together. The Golf Channel said the last time they had done so for a non-team event was in 1998.

Well, everything old is new and everything old is old at Augusta National. So as the Masters nears, there were Woods and Mickelson playing the back nine together on Tuesday. The tournament, won a combined seven times by this pair, begins on Thursday.

Mickelson, 48, won the last of his three Masters in 2010. Woods, 42, won the last of his four in – believe it or not – 2005. Woods, after his many back surgeries, seems well-entrenched in his comeback and is a 10-1 favorite to win the Masters.
Mickelson’s game has also been on the rise, with a win at the WGC-Mexico Championship, a tie for second at Pebble Beach and a tie for third at the Safeway Open.

Imagine if these two can make all of those young flat-bellies on the tour sweat a bit as they bring back the old days. Woods wasn’t exactly optimistic he and Lefty would be strolling up to the tee box on 18 on Sunday with the tournament on the line.

“We’ve had a great 20-year battle,” Woods said. “Hopefully we’ll have a few more, but we understand where we are in the game now versus where we were in our early 20s, battling for who is going to be No. 1. That was then and certainly this is now.”

It’s fun to revisit the past. But for the next few days at Augusta, it will be great to live in the now at a venue that reveres the past.

 
 
Post By: Larry Weisman, a longtime sportswriter for USA TODAY, blogs for Twistity.com. Follow him on Twitter @MrLarryWeisman