Woods enjoys his own little miracle as reality dawns
Sighs of disappointment followed Tiger Woods around Augusta National yesterday like faint echoes of his halcyon days. The huge galleries that had gathered to watch him in a steady drizzle already knew that the fairy tale of the greatest comeback in sporting history, the improbable dream of a 15th Major for the man who once ruled golf, was not going to happen but it did not make the reality any kinder.
All that was left for them were murmurs of sympathy amid the pit-a-pat of spring rain on the canopy of green and white US Masters umbrellas as Woods marched from bunker to bunker and bogey to bogey and missed putt to missed putt during the opening holes of his third round.
He recovered his poise later as the rain abated but the wry smiles and stubborn optimism of Friday evening when he had given thanks for making the cut and spoken of his dreams of forcing his way into contention had gone. The cycle of healing and suffering that has dominated the last few years of Woods’ life was beginning again.
So the resurrection will not be televised. Not yet anyway. When Woods walked out of the clubhouse here on Thursday afternoon and under the spreading branches of the old oak tree on its lawns, the crowds of onlookers parted silently in the sunshine to point his way to the first tee as if they were genuflecting before a deity. But the days when it seemed Woods would reign eternal have gone.
The Woods who played at Augusta this year was a victim of our inflated expectations. And his own. It was Woods who talked about his recent return to the professional tour after fusion surgery on his back as ‘a miracle’. The rest of us followed his lead and couched the return of the king in quasi-religious terms. As for the bookmakers, they made him the favourite to win the Masters.
It said something about the state of golf that it was so desperate to turn the clock back. Sure, everyone loves a redemption story but the fervour that has greeted Woods’ unexpected return to health and competitiveness suggests something more than that. It suggests that golf has not come close to filling the void left by Woods’ prolonged absences. No one has come close to assuming Woods’ mantle. Rory McIlroy is the most gifted player on the circuit but he has been hampered by a series of niggling injuries and a sense of fretfulness. He has not won a Major since 2014. Jordan Spieth is the closest to McIlroy as an heir to Woods and is a regular contender. Dustin Johnson has struggled to convert periods of dominance into Major triumphs.
It would be ironic if this tournament, which had been set up as the occasion when Woods would reclaim his crown, were to be the moment when McIlroy, Spieth and Johnson, all high on the leaderboard at the start of the third round, joined in the kind of rivalry that golf fans have been yearning for and showed that the professional game really can prosper after Woods.
Because at a time when golf courses across the States are closing at an alarming rate and there are concerns about slow play, the taming of the game by advances in ball and club technology and falling television audience figures, it often seems that Woods, even at the age of 42, is the only man capable of holding back the waves. To see him mired in mediocrity yesterday reminded the sport of its fragility.
It has been like that for Woods for most of the weekend. So many were willing him to win, so many analysts had persuaded themselves that he would win, that his one over par 73 on the opening day came as something of an anticlimax. His second round, when his predicted challenge for a fifth Masters crown had morphed into a struggle to make the cut, was not how the story was supposed to go.
The glory for Woods at Augusta was that he was here at all. That he was playing. That he was not lying on a bed, worn down by pain, catatonic, slurred, his life reduced to increasingly desperate attempts to seek relief from physical and mental torment. That was the only glory, though. Much of the rest was rather poignant.
Take his second round. By late on Friday afternoon, a huge gallery had gathered on the slope that leads down from the clubhouse to claim their glimpse of the fading romance of Woods’ return to the big time. But as they squinted into the spring sunshine, they could see there were two balls on the ninth green and neither of them belonged to Woods.
Woods hadn’t quite made it that far. His approach shot had died on the little hill at the front of the green and rolled back down. Woods saved par with a clutch putt just as Spieth was striding past after finishing his second round and taking a share of the clubhouse lead.
Woods was still on +4. The cut line was +5. As he waited to tee off on the 10th, a couple of opportunists waited in the distance at the right hand side of the fairway.
News of Woods’ waywardness had reached them and they were expecting more of the same. ‘I just want to get hit by one of his balls once,’ one of the guys said, ‘so I can get a signed glove or something.’
Woods disappointed them. His drive found the fairway. He made par on the 10th. On the 11th, he was outdriven by his playing partners, Marc Leishman and Tommy Fleetwood, by a distance but he made par again. As he walked to the 12th tee, the mass of spectators in front of the grandstand that looks out over Amen Corner rose to greet him.
As soon as Woods hit his tee shot, the crowd emitted a low groan of disappointment. Their communal breath of sadness followed the ball in its arc high into the air. They knew what was coming. They knew the ball was going to fall short. It landed on the bank in front of the green and fell back into Rae’s Creek.
Woods salvaged a bogey from the hole but it dropped him to +5. Even then, there was still plenty of fight left in him. He dropped a shot on the way in but he made the cut. It was a little victory.
Yesterday, his third round did not bring the charge he was hoping for. It brought that bad start and those sighs and those murmurs. And the Gods sent him Ian Poulter, with whom he has not always seen eye to eye, as a playing partner.
But it brought moments of joy and humour, too. At the 12th, amid the stunning beauty of Amen Corner, Woods struck a majestic tee shot over Rae’s Creek and to within ten feet of the hole. The crowd roared, Poulter grinned and Woods, knowing that they knew what had happened here on the previous two days, thrust his arms in the air in ironic celebration. Then he took a bow. It might not have been the fairy story we wanted but after everything he has been through, that moment of joy was its own little miracle.