A sting in Tiger’s tale
h, go, go, go, go,’’ yelled Tiger Woods. Or maybe it was ‘‘god, god, god, god,’’ – maybe the final ‘d’ had drifted away on the salted wind of Carnoustie.
This was Tiger, his strength finally ebbing, caught up in his own fascinating Morality Play. At the age of 42, the Chosen One was walking through the dunes and along the scorched golden fairways of Carnoustie in search of virtues he once took for granted.
Where were they now? Where were Imagination, Contemplation, Perseverance, Discretion, Good Deeds, Strength and Knowledge?
For a while it had seemed as if Tiger had found what he was looking for. He had found his god again. Thomas Bjorn, dredging dark Danish waters of self knowledge like a modern Hans Christian Andersen, said: ‘‘If he could get there, he would recognise himself.’’
Woods led the field at the turn but had driven into a fairway bunker on the 10th hole. There was a steep, riveted face of old turf in front of him. The green was over 100 metres away. There was a burn lurking just in front. Later Woods confessed to what was going through his mind.
‘‘At the time I thought this was the tournament. Either I hit the shot and it cleared the burn or I hit it right next to my feet. I stepped on it and pulled it off.’’
It wasn’t only himself whom Tiger was fooling. Paul Lawrie, Open champion at Carnoustie 19 years ago, said at the time: ‘‘It’s hard to see anyone else winning it. The rhythm, the face, the mannerisms.’’
You knew where Lawrie was coming from. Tiger’s ball control on the front nine had genuinely brought back memories. While the 24-year-old Xander Schauffele was hacking up the 7th hole through the long grass, barely able to move his ball out of the footprints of his own mind, Tiger seemed divine again.
We all wanted to believe in Tiger because to believe meant that we were forever young. Already Bernhard Langer, at the age of 60, had come in under par, beating young supermen like Patrick Reed, Rickie Fowler, Brooks Koepka and Ryan Fox. Now Tiger was shaping his ball as of old, playing little fades, away from the out of bounds.
If Tiger could do this then we were all immortal, if just for a day. We thought age could not wither him nor custom stale his infinite variety.
The 3-wood Tiger smoked off the fairway at the sixth, when frail atheists with microphones were telling us that the green was out of range, defied the tornup cartilage and fused vertebrae of the passing years.
‘‘We’ve been waiting a long time to see this,’’ said Tony Johnstone.
The one thing that he never did in his pomp was to compound an error. But on the 11th hole Woods compounded himself.
Even the young guys who had never properly competed against Woods had waited a long time to see this. Defending champion and joint leader Jordan Spieth said before the final round: ‘‘I’ve always wanted to battle it out with Tiger in a major – who hasn’t?’’
And now as the roars echoed round the Scottish links, Spieth was found wanting. Maybe the Carnoustie barber who had shaved Spieth’s hair to an unasked for scratch of prickles had shorn him of strength. Spieth hit his ball into the gorse and then three-putted for a double bogey on a par five.
But as the young Americans began to scatter, we saw that there was another figure plodding alongside Woods. He had seemed just a shadow for a while.
But Francesco Molinari, a 35-year-old Italian who seems made out of gnocchi, was coming into his own.
I remember the chants at the 2010 Ryder Cup of ‘‘There’s only two Molinaris, two Molinaris,’’ as Francesco partnered his brother Eduardo.
When I first encountered Francesco at the 2003 Amateur Championship, his brother was on the bag, trying to protect little Francesco from the wily matchplay ways of Gary Wolstenholme.
At the age of 42 Wolstenholme beat Molinari in the semi and won the title. But now, 15 years on, Francesco could stand on his own two feet and wasn’t about to lose to a 42-year-old again.
The 2-iron Molinari hit into the wind at the 17th was heavenly. The birdie at the final hole seemed like a benediction.
We should have known that Tiger’s earthly powers might crumble. Only once this year has he avoided a bogey in his final nine holes. It was not Enobarbus we were hearing after all, but Laurence Binyon’s mortal echo of those Shakespearean words: ‘‘Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.’’
The unwritten implication is that those of us who do not die young, who are not taken by war, grow weary. Even Tiger.
The one thing that he never did in his pomp was to compound an error. But on the 11th hole Woods compounded himself. Vanity and greed turned a bogey into a double.
At the end Tiger mused on Serena Williams and how she made a Wimbledon final after having a baby. He mused on all the tournaments he had won and how his kids ‘‘don’t remember any of them, all they have seen are my struggles and the pain I was going through’’.
But Tiger’s kids saw this. It was a day to remember. It was a day that ended with Tiger repeatedly uttering ‘‘perspective’’, a noun he could not spell 20 years ago. And so the final words of golf’s eternal Morality Play belong to Woods.
‘‘It’s going to sting for a little bit here, but given where I was to where I’m at – Blessed.’’