BUSINESS AS USUAL FOR WOODS
Tiger produces stunning comeback to captivate fans in opening round
DOUBTING Tiger Woods is a mug’s game. Golf’s rebuilt bionic man emerged from the void with the odd creaking noise and a little rust but with his head held high after a comeback that held Augusta National transfixed.
Woods might have ceded some ground to the first-round leaders but his opening oneunder-par 71 was still a quite remarkable performance after 17 months away from top-level golf and the other small matter of him almost losing his right leg in a car crash.
There were no noticeable problems for him traversing the course’s pronounced hills and valleys with the metal in his leg – only with squatting down to read his putts.
Woods chose to operate from a table-top pose that might have been an issue on other courses but, after 90 previous rounds at The Masters, he had the slopes and borrows of the greens largely covered.
There was a pointer that he might be OK for what lay ahead just before he emerged into the thronging crowd.
After completing his practice drills, he walked into the clapperboard clubhouse, removed his cap and, with a broad grin and an “excuse me” to the lady coming down the stairs, skipped up them like a bounding young pup on his way to the Champions’ Locker Room. He was looking forward to this.
He chose a vivid cerise pink shirt for his return, which was a competitor to some of the bolder azaleas around the old fruit nursery. It was certainly not shy and retiring.
If the world was going to be looking at Woods yesterday, he was happy to offer them a location beacon.
His opening drive back leaked a little right but he salvaged his par from 10 feet and was on his way.
It was a pied piper walk with huge crowds following his every move with squelching obedience after the overnight storms that had delayed play by half an hour.
To say the galleries were invested in his return was an understatement.
When Woods almost birdied the difficult fifth after a superb approach shot, his putt lipping out as he started to walk it in, one patron fell to his knees and thumped the ground in frustration. The Tiger Army had their moment at the short sixth. After a lengthy wait while Woods and his two playing partners, Louis Oosthuizen and Joaquin Niemann, all nipped off to the toilet for a synchronised comfort break, the five-times champion lined up his tee shot and arrowed it to within two feet of the hole.
Cue mayhem.
As Woods walked towards the green, he was greeted with a standing ovation and serenaded by chants of “Tiger, Tiger”. The birdie putt was a formality.
Woods was on the leaderboard and in red numbers.
He gave the shot back with a sloppy bogey six at the eighth after a five-minute delay on the fairway for the green up ahead to clear, but saved par well at the next to turn in level par.
Woods made his second birdie of the day at the 13th, only to surrender it at the next hole despite an explosive recovery shot from the pine straw.
But a 29-foot bomb at the short 16th brought another birdie and the crowd rose to their feet again following the famous fist-pump.
How golf has missed it; how golf has missed Woods. It is so good to have him back.