Woods sets sights on major sweep at Masters

AUGUSTA, Georgia -- World number one Tiger Woods will begin his much-vaunted bid for a sweep of this season's majors when he tees off on Thursday morning at Augusta National.

Woods has been paired with U.S. Open champion Angel Cabrera and Australian Stuart Appleby with the trio getting underway at 1045 local (1445 GMT).

They will start in the second last group on Friday afternoon in the second round.

Most of the pre-tournament focus has naturally centered on Woods, who has won eight of his last 10 tournaments including the final major of 2007 at the PGA Championship.

Woods, who is a four-time Masters champion, played just nine holes in practice on Tuesday and will sit out Wednesday's par-three tournament which he considers a distraction.

The pressure of expectation on the American is immense but he did little to play down speculation about a calendar grand slam with his declaration that it was "easily within reason."

"I'd like to bet against him, like the whole field here this week," Ernie Els said on Tuesday. "But it's definitely in his reach. He's definitely capable. I don't think we've seen a player like him ever. He's really one of a kind, and that's saying a lot."

"You have to understand why I said that," Woods said. "Because I've done it before. I've won all four in a row. The majority of my career -- I think this is my 12th or 13th season out here -- nine of those years, I've won five or more tournaments. So (I've) just got to win the right four. That's what it boils down to."

Woods is the only professional to hold all four majors at the same time, sweeping them in a span of 294 days from the 2000 U.S. Open to the 2001 Masters.

And he showed up at Augusta last year going for his third straight major only to be denied by Zach Johnson who will start two groups ahead of him on Thursday grouped with England's Luke Donald and Australia's Geoff Ogilvy, the 2006 U.S. Open champion.

Ogilvy ended Woods' run of seven straight tournament wins from the start of the year when he took the WGC event at Doral and is one of the main dangers in the first major of the year.

Likewise world number two Phil Mickelson who goes for his third green jacket with a late afternoon start on Thursday with Andres Romero of Argentina and KJ Choi of South Korea.

Golf legend Arnold Palmer will start the event with a ceremonial first tee shot at 0750 local time. Ben Curtis and Shaun Micheel, who each have one career major championship to their credit, play in the first official group and start at 0800 (1200 GMT).

Just under three hours later the first tee will surely be crammed as Woods gets underway.

"This major is so important to all of us," he said. "It's a special event. You always want to win this event. I've been lucky enough to have won it four times. But in order to win all on the calendar, you have to win here, yeah. Hopefully, I can get it done this year and move on." E-mail to a friend

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