Within striking distance

The 69th Masters Tournament should be subtitled, "From Here to Eternity." Because that's how long, it seems, it has taken to play two and a half rounds.

We're about to enjoy that magical time, Sunday at the Masters, and those players near the lead still have the better part of 27 holes to play. If the Masters doesn't really begin until the back nine on Sunday, as conventional wisdom suggests, then this finish is going to be doubly good because leader Chris DiMarco, pursuers Tiger Woods and Thomas Bjorn, and the rest are going to play the back nine twice on Sunday.

When darkness halted play Saturday night, and prevented completion of the third round, the Masters resembled a three-man race. DiMarco made three birdies on the front nine and was at 13 under, leading by four over Woods, who scorched the front nine for 31 and had 12 birdies on the 27 holes he played Saturday. Bjorn, playing in the final pairing with DiMarco, was five back. However, because a round and a half still remain, even players 10 or 12 shots behind are still in it if they post a low back-nine score when they finish up Sunday morning.

The obvious question is, who will win? Here's how I handicap Sunday's unusual finish:

No disrespect to DiMarco, whose alley fighting style I like, but this eight-time major champion is the man to beat even though he's spotting DiMarco four shots. His performance Saturday was the Tiger of old, not an old Tiger. New swing or not, Woods played stylish, near flawless golf and it makes you look back on his opening round as a positive -- the guy putted off two greens, including once into a water hazard, knocked a wedge off a flagstick and into a bunker for bogey, and played a vicious carom shot off a tree on the eighth hole ... and still shot only 74.

Every bad bounce you can think of was thrown at him and he stayed in the mix, wiping all his troubles out with a second-round 66, then that sizzling 31 that had everyone, including his competitors, talking.

"That was an impressive front nine, wasn't it?" Bjorn said. "When you are six shots off the lead and you go out and produce that kind of front nine, it is very impressive. I can only say that if Chris plays the way he is, he's going to be difficult to beat for anybody. Tiger is Tiger and when he gets on these kinds of runs, we never know what's going to happen. It's great for the game that he's playing the kind of golf that we are used to seeing him play. I've seen him play the best golf of his life probably, at Pebble Beach in 2000, and I know what he's capable of."

When looking ahead to the final round of any tournament, I always perform a simple exercise: erase the leader, no matter who it is or no matter how big their lead is, and what have you got? You'd be amazed how often the leader fades, falls back or melts down in the last round.

For the sake of argument, let's throw out DiMarco. Woods then, has a one-shot lead over Bjorn and a five-shot lead over Mark Hensby, Rod Pampling and Vijay Singh. A posse of players at 3 under par, six behind Tiger, includes former Masters champs Mike Weir and Phil Mickelson. Know anybody who'd bet against Tiger in that position? So all he's got to do is make up four shots on DiMarco over 27 holes.

One other thing about karma: Things are now falling Tiger's way. He arrived in the 10th fairway to find a big clump of mud on the ball just in time to hear the horn sound, indicating the end of play Saturday night. He had the option of finishing the hole or marking his spot and picking up his ball.