And now the end is near. And so, he faces the final curtain.
If not in this particular Masters starting on Thursday in Augusta, it seems sometime very soon.
All the signs seem to be that Tiger Woods is starting to recognise that while his spirit is still willing, his body is weak and getting weaker – and the time is fast approaching when retirement will be a better option than staying out on course and embarrassing himself. He’s 47 and from the sounds of things, on a cold morning getting out of bed his badly battered body feels closer to 75.
For the inevitable question was posed to Woods at Tuesday’s press conference: “This time last year, you said you definitely would not be here unless you thought you had a good chance of winning the tournament. Does that still stand?”
The short answer?
It does not. He is old and getting older. Courtesy of that age, and the shocking car accident he had in 2021, his abilities are not within a bull’s roar of what they used to be and, while hope still springs eternal, his bloody leg hurts worse than ever!
“I think my game is better than it was last year at this particular time. I think my endurance is better. But my leg aches a little bit more than it did last year. I just have to be cognisant of how much I can push it. I can hit a lot of shots but the difficulty for me is going to be my walking, going forward. It is what it is. I wish it could be easier. [But] that’s my future, and I’m OK with that … I don’t know how many more I have in me.”
Tiger Woods during a practice round at Augusta.Credit:AP
If anyone else said something like that, you couldn’t quite put it in the bank as a quasi-retirement-announcement. But with Woods, it is different. As a man so relentlessly upbeat about his chances throughout his career, who never saw an obstacle he didn’t want to take a nine-iron to, who was already planning his comeback from what could have been his deathbed after the accident, such a world-weary assessment of where he’s at surely presages indeed the final curtain.
This may not be his final tournament, but I’ll bet it is his last Masters as a serious entrant.
In that case, I hope it’s a beauty.
“Indian summers” – when even in the deepest autumn the weather gives you a few precious days of summer – do happen in sport. In golf, you will recall that back in 2009 the American golfer Tom Watson was 59 and had not won a major since 1983! He was finished, washed up, a shadow of the player he once was. And yet, and yet over four glorious days of July 2009, it all came back to him.
The drives were straight down the fairway once more! The putts were dropping from fifteen metres out. Bunkers were things his competitors got trapped in, not him. There was no rhyme or reason why his abilities should have so suddenly returned from nowhere in his 60th year – just as there had been no rhyme or reason why they had so suddenly definitively deserted our own Ian Baker-Finch two decades earlier.
Sometimes these things just happen. And Watson got within one shot – one stinking shot of getting a par on the 18th hole on the fourth day, instead stumbling to a bogey allowing Stewart Cink back into it, but don’t get me started, as Elvis and I will be in our trailer shooting the TV– of winning!
Even more impressive was Jack Nicklaus winning the 1986 Masters at the age of 46 and 50-year-old Phil Mickelson claiming the 2021 US PGA crown in South Carolina.
I don’t remotely say such a thing will happen to Woods. But I do say it is possible that a man of his ability, done down by shocking injury of mercurial hurt, might – just might – come good for a few days if the mercury is high.
Fan favourite … Woods attracted big galleries during his roundCredit:Getty
And I also say it would be one of the great stories in sport if it did, and give him the perfect exit.
True, I write this as one who has penned more critical articles than most about Woods. At his absolute height, he was – what’s that word again? – a dick. He was as rude to galleries as he was to his fellow competitors. He was cold to the press and sneered more than he merely spoke. He was exposed as living a double life where, despite selling himself to marketing as “Mr Family Man” he was committing adultery on an industrial scale, involving private jets on standby and women working in relays.
Then came the fall – which began with his wife taking said nine-iron and caving in the back window of the car he was trying to use as his getaway vehicle – and the long climb back.
He never did get back the form of previous years, bar one wonderful Masters win in 2019, but the trauma of his experience and his long climb back seemed to give him something else more valuable – he became a much better and far more likable man.
Just as Andre Agassi had started out as a genius brat only to turn himself into a tennis statesman through the process of first losing his way and then finding his way back to the top of the podium, so, too Woods.
In the last fourteen years, Woods has only won that one major, but he has ten times the respect now than when he was at the very height of his abilities. The humility that came with humiliation, the wisdom that came from contemplation of just where he had gone wrong turned him into one of the most revered figures in the sport once more, despite the lack of results.
In the recent civil war between the PGA and LIV, Woods has been, with Rory McIlroy, a cross between Churchill and Gandhi. His mere presence on the PGA side of things highlight the truth: LIV was no more than a circus.
His has been the most storied career in golf. How wonderful if the final chapter could be a great performance at the Masters, and then to all a good night.
Twitter: @Peter_Fitz
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