Catch-22 for Woods in pursuit of more major titles

It’s been 18 months since Tiger Woods’ cathartic and historic victory at the 2019 Masters, surely the most memorable moment of the last half-decade of golf, at least. Once the obvious wonder and euphoria of the win – which Woods admitted had a profound effect on him as much as anyone – had subsided, there were intriguing questions to be asked.

For some, this was Tiger re-engaged. The long-awaited 18-major target of Jack Nicklaus was now in plain view again; there seemed no reason why more majors wouldn’t follow, and three or four seemed reasonable enough.

Those who had written him off as finished – a verdict he believed himself, he conceded, at the worst of his injury phase when actually walking was a problem – were munching through a sizeable portion of humble pie, but could make an equally reasonable claim that this was a one-off.

If a 15th major was to happen, Augusta was the obvious location, and the other contenders did kind of wave him through to the victory with a series of basic errors.

A year and a half on, it looks for all the world that the pie-eaters were right.

Woods has played just 13 tournaments since his Masters win (I’m counting only full-strength events here, not made-for-TV knockabouts or “World” Challenges or Presidents Cups which somehow find their way on to the PGA Tour’s annual schedule).

The massive, glaring outlier in these 13 events was the ZOZO Championship in Japan 11 months ago, which had the third strongest field of “normal” events (by which I mean not majors, WGC or FedEx play-off events) in all of 2019, and in which he shot 19-under to win.

The rest have been fairly mundane. In 2020, he played just two events pre-lockdown, playing decently at Torrey Pines in the Farmer Insurance Open, and abysmally on the weekend at his own Genesis Invitational event at Riviera.

Since the restart, he hasn’t cracked the top 35 and only got into two rounds of the play-offs due to his ZOZO win, which counted for this season.

At the tight confines of Olympia Fields in the BMW Championship, Tiger was more than 20 spots off the top 30 who got into this week’s snoozefest Tour Championship at East Lake, the venue of his last PGA Tour win in the USA, back in 2018.

There’s a good and obvious reason for this run of mediocrity.

Woods is playing with a fused back, and he concedes that whether he’s competitive or not is very much a week-to-week thing.

When the weather is cool – think Pebble Beach for the US Open last year, the Open at Portrush and the PGA at Harding Park the other week – he’s not really capable of seriously contending.

There’s also a Catch-22 situation for Tiger: he clearly needs to be more tournament-sharp and competitive by playing a lot more than he’s been doing. But at the same time, his body can’t cope with the rigours of even the meagre schedule he’s given himself.

Prior to his Masters win, Woods played just five events in nearly four months, and one of those was the WGC Matchplay. Any competitive sharpness he was lacking was counterbalanced by his superior knowledge of Augusta – you forget, but really only Phil Mickelson has more experience now of the game’s regular major championship venues.

And that’s why we’d be foolish to rule Tiger out of any more majors. He has all this knowledge locked away and it’s going to be useful more than once down the line.

I don’t suspect he’ll be a contender at the US Open next week at Winged Foot, but he’s already spoken about his relish at defending an autumnal Masters in November, pointedly noting the lack of distraction from galleries is something he’s looking forward to.

I think the restrictions of what his body can stand means he’ll not now get to 18 majors or beyond. But there will be some chances to pinch one or two more between now and the end, I fancy.

Small IS beautiful

Despite appearances, not everyone is obsessed with longer and longer golf. Credit to Golf Magazine, who compiled a “short golf best of” last week, including their top 25 courses in the world under 6,000 yards.

Scotland and Courier Country is well represented in this list. An obvious choice is the Queen’s Course at Gleneagles – for my money easily the best course on that celebrated property, and it’s not even close.

Stonehaven’s crazy cliffs and carries are on there, as are the beloved Kilspindie in East Lothian, Iona, “Royal” Dunaverty on the Mull of Kintyre and the peerless experience that is the 12-hole Shiskine on Arran.

Golf also revealed their 50 best Par 3 courses in the world, obviously topped with Augusta’s, which clearly none of us will ever get to play.

Many moons ago – prior to the 1992 Open at Muirfield – I saw Paul Azinger out with his and friend’s kids playing North Berwick’s children’s course. There was much laughter and excitement going on.

“You seem to be enjoying that,” your scribe noted. “It’s awesome,” he said.

“I tell you what, it’s much more fun than Augusta’s par three course.”

I’ll take his word for it.

Tiger has spoken about his relish at defending an autumnal Masters in November

Picture: AP. Tiger Woods can win more majors, but time is not on his side.