Is a victory for all of us
after being crushed by a Greyhound bus. Nikki Lauda almost burned to death at the Nurburgring and drove again just six weeks later.
But Tiger hadn’t just lost his body. He lost his mind, he lost his technique, he lost his respect, he lost his shock and awe, he lost his friends, he lost his wife, he lost his dad, he lost his kids and, for a while, he had lost his soul. He was dredging the darkest waters of mankind.
And when there was a glimpse of Tiger last year at Carnoustie, just a glimpse like sunshine for a brief moment breaking through the clouds and picking a sparkle on a dark, churning Scottish wave, Thomas Bjorn said in commentary: ‘‘If he could get there he would recognise himself.’’
At Augusta, the place where it all started 22 years ago, Tiger recognised himself again. Through the shame and the pain and all the twisted fame, Tiger saw the man he had once been. And surely that is a beautiful and glorious thing. Surely that gives us all hope. Surely this is some sort of resurrection as we all plod towards Easter weekend.
When Woods won the 2008 US Open, his last major victory, he had two stress fractures of the shin and his ACL was shot. Yet impossibly Tiger still won. It was the most astounding achievement I had witnessed in sport.
Mark O’Meara said: ‘‘It’s a God-given thing. People come along in a lifetime, maybe it’s Mozart or maybe it’s Einstein, and get told they can’t do something. They don’t say anything in response. They just keep figuring out ways to do it. They defy the odds. I know how
much he’s been hurting. This will come to be seen as the greatest of all his wins.’’
Eleven years ago there is not a soul on the planet who would have disagreed with O’Meara. And yet this, the 15th of Tiger’s major wins, is somehow, impossibly, even greater.
It was also the first of Tiger’s major victories when he came from behind. On the scoreboard Woods was two shots behind Francesco Molinari, but he came from far further back than that. Tiger came from the darkest night of the soul and he won just before the storm came in again, the lightning and thunder crashing around the heavy Augusta sky.
But at last Tiger was out of the storm. He had found redemption for himself, for his kids and for us. This was surely the greatest of all sporting victories.
‘‘This was surely the greatest of all sporting victories.’’