Tiger exits his gilded cage
When Jack Nicklaus won his 18th and final major six years after his 17th, Jim Nantz of CBS exclaimed: ‘‘The bear has come out of hibernation.’’ It was a grand spectacle – but not as momentous as Tiger coming out of captivity.
A gilded cage has been home to Tiger Woods, whose return to titlecontending form at the Open and US PGA Championship was electrifying. On Monday, it boosted ratings for Nantz’s channel by 69 per cent compared with the 2017 event, and sent a surge of anticipation round world sport as people who cared little two years ago about Woods’s problems rushed to see whether time’s arrow really had been reversed.
Now the questions multiply. Can Woods actually win another major rather than just challenge? Does he need to complete the redemption cycle – or is this resurrection enough? And will the generation who thrived in his absence now fear him, as all did in his two pomps, from 1997-2002 and
2005-2008?
‘‘Physical wreck restored to fistpumping potency’’ is a good tale any day of the week. To see Woods return from surgical wards to prime-time prominence evokes Ben Hogan’s recovery from a head-on crash with a Greyhound bus in 1949. Hogan spent
59 days in hospital with a fractured left collarbone, a double fracture of his pelvis, a broken ankle and a chipped rib, and carried the physical legacy all his life, but returned to win six majors, the first only 12 months later.
With Woods, we are in no danger of overstating what his resurgence means for golf, for sport, and for middle-aged people whose bodies are falling apart. Yes, powerful forces are at play when Woods, who was respected but not loved by the public in his unsmiling Nike warrior phase, is seen as Everyman: the hero who survived countless surgeon’s cuts, emotional turmoil, public shaming and creeping pathos as he mooched about on the fringes of the action.
Many of us thought Woods was trapped in the role of great champ trying and failing to rise again. The spirit was willing but the body was weak. In the seven basic plots of sport, Woods was the guy who could not let go and skirted the edge of pity. He was an almost honorary figure at the majors.
In December he slipped to 1199 in the rankings. ‘‘I didn’t have a golf swing,’’ he recalled after chasing home Brooks Koepka in Bellerive with his best final round at a major.
Koepka, of course, is every inch the modern athlete golfer, and was not spooked by having a Tiger on his tail, as most would have been when Woods was in his prime.
Back then, the best golfer since Nicklaus brought money gushing into the game, a bonanza now enjoyed by the players Woods is threatening once more. His fist-pump after he posted a US PGA Championship record 14-under par for his final two rounds was seen by American golf reporters as a challenge to the new breed, led by Koepka.
Instinct says that few of those postWoods luminaries will be trembling at the prospect of the gilded veteran, 43 in December, hunting them down to usher in a third reign. They will know he still lacks trust in his driver off the tee. They will back themselves to hold off the blast from the past. But they will also see Woods starting to correct a problem he admitted to at Carnoustie: a tendency to ‘‘lose focus’’ on the back nine.
Before, Woods had no way of knowing whether he could shoot such low numbers, and contend again on Sundays. Now he knows he can: a huge bridge to cross after 10 years.
A 15th major win would eclipse even Nicklaus’s 18th, in the 1986 Masters, aged 46, because Woods has overcome a litany of surgical emergencies; most recently, last year’s spinal fusion, a procedure with apparently magical powers.
The heart says he has done enough already to reach this point. The head dictates that he needs to add another major to his list to get all the violins playing. And here a formidable array of young talent blocks his path to that blockbuster outcome.
This week, it may dawn on Woods that he has just raised the bar for himself to a daunting new height. Spieth is 9-1 favourite for the next major, the 2019 Masters, but Woods is only 12-1.
At Carnoustie, he led with eight holes to play, and he finished runnerup at Bellerive. In both cases, he played on probation, as he will at next month’s Ryder Cup in France. In October last year, a 12-month probation was among his punishments when he pleaded guilty in a Florida court to reckless driving. Then, the familiar celebrity trajectory of crash and burn seemed to have him high on its to-do list.
As things stand, Woods is transcending his highly controlled childhood, public humiliation, dreadful back and knee problems, the death of his swing and a drift into irrelevance.
There are already several new major victories on that list. His young rivals meanwhile know how they can avoid being overshadowed by the king’s return: keep beating him.
Many of us thought Woods was trapped in the role of great champ trying and failing to rise again.