Tiger burning bright again
It is, without doubt, “one of the most giddying comebacks in sport”, said Oliver Brown in The Daily Telegraph. Just over a year ago, Tiger Woods was a “husk” of a man: struggling to recover from a fourth operation on his injured back; addicted to painkillers; unsure if he’d ever play golf again. “His game, his health and his reputation all looked shredded beyond repair.” But on Sunday night, more than five years since his last tournament victory, the 42-year-old won the PGA Tour’s season-ending Tour Championship at East Lake in Georgia. The victory had been on the cards for a while. Woods led the field “for a few precious moments” at this year’s Open at Carnoustie, and ran Brooks Koepka close at the US PGA. But those “near-misses” amplified the fears that he could no longer compete at the very top level – that he’d “lost his edge as a Sunday closer”. No one’s doubting him any more.
It’s easy to forget just how low Woods sunk, said Tom Fordyce on BBC Sport online. His back problems were so bad that he “struggled to bend down to pick his ball up from the cup”; at last year’s President’s Cup, he was reluctant to serve as a captain’s assistant because he found the bumps when riding in a golf cart too painful. He dropped to 1,199th in the world rankings, and told an interviewer that his main goal was to be able to play with his kids without suffering debilitating pain. But Woods always believed he could eventually bounce back – and on Sunday, that self-belief paid off. “It is fascinating that Woods has evolved into the people’s golfer,” said Ewan Murray in The Guardian. When tales of his extramarital affairs first emerged in 2009, that was a domain many thought “he couldn’t possibly inhabit”. But sports fans – Americans in particular – always love a redemption story.
The story “could have been even better”, said Rick Broadbent in The Times. Woods’s victory almost won him the Fedex Cup, the fourtournament competition of which the Tour Championship is the climax, but world No. 1 Justin Rose shot a final-hole birdie to take the $10m prize. Not that Woods will care. He’ll now think “a 15th major is within his grasp” – heck, “even Jack Nicklaus’s tally of 18 may feel feasible”. And this weekend, of course, there’s the small matter of the Ryder Cup, at Le Golf National outside Paris. Woods’s brilliant comeback should give the biennial Us-europe competition “a 1,000-volt jolt to the system”.