Bill Lyon: Golf's greatest week dawns anew at Masters

So there he stands, on the 10th tee of a golf course of intoxicating treachery and shadow-streaked splendor, a fabled arena celebrated in lore and legend, and there it is, shimmering, spreading out before him in the soft spring of a Georgia day, invitingly, seductively.

It is the time and the place of unfailing high drama: Sunday at the Masters, the back nine. Fore, please, for Rory McIlroy.

He is all of 21, this lad of Northern Ireland, and for four days he has strode the swales and hummocks of Augusta National remarkably poised and apparently unflappable, clutching resolutely at the lead of the 2011 Masters and not, as so many before him have, coming undone.

Locked and loaded, he launches his drive.

THWACK!

And then . . .

And then, ah, Rory me boy, what in the name of Paddy's pig was that?

It was a snap hook off the tee, that's what it was, the kind you and I have committed to memory and can summon at will. His tee ball ricochets down amongst the stand of stately pines, clattering and taunting and rolling on and on, finally disappearing entirely from view.

When finally located, it is reckoned to be a good 100 yards - an entire football field - away from the fairway. Even the most senior of the Fraternity of Green Coats cannot recall ever seeing a ball in those outer precincts.

And that would be that. It would be the beginning of the end for the plucky Irish lad. There would follow a grisly procession of scuffs and chunks and mis-hit strokes that would add up to a closing round of 80.

Afterward, dazed and shell-shocked, he wandered around aimlessly, only to find that applause followed him.

"They feel sorry for me, I guess," he said.

As a matter of fact, we did. We all did. We groaned and grimaced in sympathy as he melted down, each hesitant swing like a knife to the gizzard. We took no pleasure in watching a man being tortured. All who have ever taken up a club know how pitilessly humbling this game can be.

Poor Rory. He was not the first to succumb to the fatal allure of the dowager Augusta, nor will he be the last. Sometimes the wounds scab over and sometimes the wounded bear the scars forever.

It was assumed that poor Rory would limp into the sunset, never to darken a leader board again.

Ah, but wait. What's this? It is the 2011 United States Open, that's what. It is being held just two months after the Massacre at the Masters and there is none other than young master McIlroy striding along with jaunty purpose, en route to effecting one of the more extraordinary recoveries in a sport that can bring even the most resolute to their knees.

No longer poor Rory. Now U.S. Open champion Rory, who is a dominating 8 strokes clear of the field, with a four-day score 16 below par, numbers no one else has ever matched.

Golf, suddenly, has a new Boy King. Rory McIlroy, in the first week of March, ascends to the No. 1 ranking in the world, then slips to No. 2.

He handles it with aplomb. He is gallery-friendly, media- obliging, steely of nerve, rocket-launcher-long. He is, in contrast, many of those things that the used-to-be-No. 1 wasn't. But is working on.

We speak of Eldrick the Super Feline. Who is back, and not a moment too soon.

Tiger Woods, you may have heard, won a PGA Tour tournament recently. For the first time in 30 months. His golf game resembled that of the Tiger of yore. Fist bumps all 'round.

How fortuitous for us all is that timing. To begin with, this is already always the best week of the year. (Well, it is for those of us whose wives say they don't have to worry about us taking a mistress because we already have one and her name is Augusta.)

And now, tread softly so as not to awaken the azaleas, we get the Boy King and the Once and Future King on the same course, same time, same station. When last measured, Rory was averaging 310.6 yards off the tee, Tiger 299.4. Considering the ferocious amount of ego that will be involved, they might hit the ball into orbit.

Will Rory feel the hot breath from the ghosts of that Masters meltdown? Will Tiger, so eager to reprise the good times, overswing and limp off the course again?

Or . . . or, if the golfing gods smile on us, we could be treated to the perfect finish, at a time and place that specializes in such things: Sunday. Back nine. Where trouble and glory share the same address. Tiger picks up the pursuit of Jack Nicklaus and those 18 majors, and Rory must demonstrate he is as good as we think.

Or . . . or, someone else, without warning, creates an impossible shot off a pine-straw lie, out of the trees, over the water, onto the exquisitely manicured green - Phil Mickelson . . . paging Mr. Mickelson, please . . . red courtesy telephone. . . .

Oh and there will be the noise, of course, throaty, guttural, sounds rushing through the valleys, rising up from down around Amen Corner, animal sounds celebrating birdie, dying echoes mourning bogey.

"Something great is always going on down there," Jack Nicklaus once said.

Amen.