As strange as it sounds, it took a second-place finish, an expletive (and a couple of fake ones) and a permanent scowl on his part to finally sway us that Tiger Woods is the greatest athlete of this generation, and perhaps any generation. We arrived at that conclusion by really thinking about what it means to be a dominant golfer. It’s one thing to dominate tennis (looking at you, Mr. Federer) or basketball (Mr. Bryant) or pretty much any other sport. But in golf, we finally came to appreciate this weekend, you have the unique situation (unless it’s match play) of competing against every single elite player at the same time. Think about almost every other sports scenario, and it’s one team or individual at a time. Even in most track and field events, or things like gymnastics and skiing, the field is essentially narrowed along the way. In golf, all you get is the cut after two days, which eliminates the players who really don’t have a chance. Otherwise, it’s basically just a mad scramble: you against everyone. And going into the Masters, this is how at least one on-line site viewed that matchup, for betting purposes:

CURRENT 2008 MASTERS BETTING ODDS
(All Odds Subject to Change)
TIGER WOODS 7/5
FIELD (ALL OTHERS) 9/2
PHIL MICKELSON 8/1
ERNIE ELS 15/1
VIJAY SINGH 18/1
JIM FURYK 20/1

Etc.

TREVOR IMMELMAN 50/1

Yes, that’s right: Tiger Woods was a better bet than everyone else combined. It’s one thing to be favored when all you have are a few opponents to beat (a la major pro sports playoffs or even a major tennis tournament). It’s another to take on everyone at once, Kung Fu style, and be expected to vanquish  them all. Someone is bound to get lucky, catch fire, find you at the wrong time, or some such thing. So as Tiger scuffled and swore and missed putts on the way to that disappointing second-place finish — the burden of expectation clearer than ever on his face and in his body language — we came to appreciate his greatness more than ever.

What else?

*Francisco Liriano: not the same. The Twins don’t need him to be special this year, but they need him to be effective. We’ll see if he can get there.

*The Yankees, led by Randy Levine and Hank Steinbrenner, have officially become the parody of themselves portrayed on “Seinfeld.” There’s no other way to describe it based on this whole buried jersey story. What a bunch of clowns.

*Keep rolling with the good karma, Wolves. Don’t listen to the naysayers. Keep winning if the wins are there. A few percentage points in the lottery don’t mean as much as doing it the right way.

*Game 3. 9 tonight. We hope you are sufficiently excited.

Fasola-link! Why baseball rules all. Or something like that.

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