MARK REASON COLUMN
Woods’ form a major talking point heading back to Augusta National.
He’s back. Tiger Woods, America’s most unreliable boyfriend, will stroll up Magnolia Lane as if nothing has happened. The chosen one reckons he’s entitled. No matter how many times Tiger dumps his sweetheart, he knows she will always have him back. The Masters can get on without Tiger in its life, but it isn’t the same without that bitter-sweet thrill.
For the past 21 years Augusta has been Tiger Town. Even in the years when Woods went missing, half the talk was about Tiger’s return. There is no getting away from Tiger, even when he is not there. Because the Masters is played over the same piece of turf each year, it is defined by history,
Every shot down the stretch is an echo of someone else’s success or failure in a previous year. Augusta thrives on its past. The green jackets and the pimento sandwiches may have grown a fraction larger, but this is still the world of Bobby Jones. And Jack Nicklaus. And Tiger Woods. These are surely the three American greats who dominate the story of the Masters.
Last year Woods said: ‘‘I’m trying everything to be able to get back and play. I love that event. It’s meant so much to me in my life. It has so much history and meaning to me, I’d love to get back.’’ He’s back.
But the frightening thing is that Tiger has half a chance of winning. He lies fifth in scoring average this season. He finished 12th at the Honda, second at the Valspar and fifth at Bay Hill. Tiger has a chance.
And like a fool I’m going to write him off. Betfair and Paddy Power have Woods joint favourite with Rory McIlroy and Justin Thomas. That has to be crazy talk. Augusta may give Woods sanctuary. He can walk onto the course and feel the bliss of familiarity and memories and solitude.
Did I say solitude? Well yes, because although there are thousands of patrons lining the fairways, there are areas of the course where they don’t come close to the players.
The Masters is unlike any other golf tournament. Amen Corner can be a sanctuary for the soul.
It can also be hell on earth. Just ask Jordan Spieth. And maybe this year Amen Corner will have a doubly eerie sound and silence for Tiger.
With impeccable timing a diligently researched book on Woods has just been released. Once upon a time men like Richard Ellmann dedicated such scholarship to the lives of men like James Joyce and Oscar Wilde.
The literary dilemma asked – can you read the work without needing to know about the life, or does the life inform the work? The question can now apparently be asked of Tiger and it is just a little delicious that one of the two authors (Jeff Benedict is the other) of the new weighty Tiger Woods biography is called Armen Keteyian – writin’ and shoutin’ in that armen corner.
The New York Times reviewed the new book of Woods by observing: ‘‘It’s a big American story that rolls across barbered lawns and then leaves you stranded in some all-night Sam’s Club of the soul. It reminded me of a line from Martin Amis’ new book of essays: ‘How drunk was Scott Fitzgerald when he said there were no second acts in American lives’?’’
He’s back.
Tiger is looking for the second act of his life. His father Earl is portrayed as a manipulative sex maniac. Tiger yearns to escape that man. He yearns to escape the guy who thought his boy was entitled and who made up stories about his son’s life and who raised a brat who scarcely knew how to say thank you.
And yet Tiger says he loves to go out in the late Jupiter evenings, by himself: ‘‘That’s one of the happiest times I can ever experience. It brings back all the great times I had with my dad . . . We’d go back in the corner, on No 6, way back there in the corner . . . and we’d be on the tee back there just hitting golf balls, not saying a word to each other. Going out in the evenings brings me back to that happy place.’’
There’s the contradiction. Tiger’s dad was a monster and a companion. And there’s the challenge. Ever since he was found comatose and doped up on the roadside last year, Woods has maybe wanted to find the simple way to be no more than a good dad for his kids. He wants to show them what he can do. What he has been. He wants to banish Earl’s monster.
That’s a tough story to write at Augusta. So Jack won the title at 46. But it is 10 years since Tiger had a top three. It is 13 years since he won his last green jacket. Since his last victory in 2005 Tiger has had only eight rounds out of 36 in the 60s, with just one 66 and then a next best of 68.
In Tiger’s winning years from 1997-2005 he had 14 rounds out of 36 in the 60s, with two rounds of 65 and a staggering five rounds of 66. It is quite a contrast. Tiger has never quite mastered the added length and other course changes.
But the green jackets just want him back. I may look at Justin Rose, Dustin Johnson, Paul Casey and even Phil Mickelson, and wonder if their recent records give them a much better chance than Tiger. But that is to ignore the impossible.
Authors Benedict and Keteyian write of Tiger: ‘‘We see him in the same vein as Shakespeare. Someone no one had ever seen or will ever see again.’’
The groundlings line up to see him. When Tiger got into contention at the Valspar, NBC had their highest non major ratings since Woods won the Players in 2013. Digitally it went off the scale, with a 600 per cent increase on the previous year’s Saturday.
When Bubba Watson won the Masters in 2014, Augusta had its lowest ratings since Bernhard Langer beat Chip Beck in 1993. You didn’t need a research company to work out why. There was no Tiger.
He’s back.
The world is watching.
I say it can’t be done, but we’ve all always been Tiger’s fool.