I feel tremendous angst at this time of year, as the world's attention turns to an exclusive club and its exclusive tournament.
The Masters strips me bare, exposing me to the harsh light of my greatest failure and its eternal shame.
You see, I was meant to walk the hallowed fairways of Augusta National Golf Club; trained from an early age by my father to be a Masters champion, to be the best-ever golfer.
My father would wake me at dawn six days a week and take me to Gladstone Golf Club to hit hundreds of balls - a drill that continued for years.
He was a disciplinarian in the mold of a sadistic prison guard. For example, the Doberman puppy he produced on my sixth birthday was a "present" he trained for a special task. I can still visualise his forearm veins bulging as the leash in his hands strained when the dog lunged at me while I hit balls on the range.
When Tiger was a child, Earl Woods swore loudly at him during backswings to mentally harden him - my old man used a nameless attack dog.
Dad's cruel methods also included hiring Hare Krishnas to chant, play instruments and dance around me as I putted.
Earl Woods turned his son into a blazing comet who still hypnotises. Frank Bode turned me into a neurotic, adult bedwetter whose golf high point was finishing B grade runner-up at the Gladstone club championships.
Even on his deathbed he didn't spare me. It's easy to imagine a dying Earl Woods telling Tiger that no son could have made his father prouder.
A dying Frank Bode told me that he suspected I'd never be the best because I had a small penis.
Moments before his final breath, he informed me that while at a urinal at the 1964 Australian Open at The Lakes, in Sydney, Jack Nicklaus took a leak next to him. Dad asked him to reveal the secret of his success.
Jack said it was a combination of natural talent, a strong work ethic and being well hung. He said that as far as he knew, most great golfers, probably most great men, were well hung. Dad peeked. Jack wasn't lying.
Years later, at a luxury London spa, I was in the sauna and in walked Tiger - buck naked and long like his golf game.
I don't remember what happened next, but Tiger told security that I urinated and then danced around the sauna chanting "Hare Krishna ... Hare Krishna ... Krishna, Krishna ..."
Mark Bode is an ACM journalist. He uses satire and fiction in commentary.
