Let’s enjoy watching what could be one of Tiger Woods’ final Masters
Of course, even at age 48 with a body that’s been stitched up and put back together again more often than Frankenstein’s monster and Humpty Dumpty, Tiger Woods believes he can win the Masters.
“If everything comes together,” the fivetime champion told reporters Tuesday in Augusta, Georgia, “I think I can get one more.
“Do I need to describe that any more than that, or are we good?”
Oh, we’re good. Because, frankly, it’s too hard to hear about goals like tying Jack Nicklaus for a record sixth Masters title that are so far-fetched they’ve gone from feeling impossible to unimaginable. It’s like Apollo Creed believing he can beat Drago or Monty Python’s Black Knight thinking he can still fight without any arms or legs.
Does it even matter? Can true golf fans keep themselves watching Tiger tee off at 1:24 p.m. Thursday with Max Homa and Jason Day?
Ostensibly, we’ll watch because we also truly, honestly believe there’s a chance Tiger can win. It’s because we remember how Tiger used to win and how, for a time, he owned Augusta National. His 12-shot victory over Tom Kite in 1997 is still the largest margin of victory. He won three times in five years and followed that with six top-six finishes.
Watching Tiger beat up on the field at Augusta was like trying to beat your buddy on his home course, where he knew every bounce, all the angles and exactly when the drink cart would arrive. It seemed unfair.
But we’ll also watch for another reason: the unfair inevitability of time and how it has ravaged Tiger a lot faster and more savagely than any of us dreamed it would.
“I hurt every day,” he said.
He was asked if it was worse at Augusta, an especially hilly course.
“I ache,” he said. “No, I ache every day. And I prefer it warm and humid and hot. And I know we’re going to get some thunderstorms. So at least it will be hot. It won’t be like last year.”
I ache? I prefer it warm and humid? This is what your grandpa tells you was he cranks up the thermostat at Thanksgiving. It’s not what the greatest golfer of our generation who fundamentally changed the game says.
It used to seem like Tiger was wearing a cape while he flew around the course, pumping his fists after miraculous shots and showing us things we’d never seen before. Now it looks like he’s ready to trade in that cape for a shawl. He was even asked if he had given any thought to becoming an honorary starter one of these days.
“No,” he said with a polite but uncomfortable smile, “I have not thought about being a starter here, no.”
It’s too soon for Tiger to join the likes of Nicklas, Gary Player and Tom Watson at the Masters. But it isn’t too soon to consider his retirement from competitive golf because, honestly, he’s already semiretired. He hasn’t played more than three tournaments in a year since 2020.
Tiger has played only one tournament this year, and even then he managed just one round at the Genesis Invitational outside Los Angeles before he had to withdraw because of flu. It was even worse at last year’s Masters, when he was in obvious pain hiking around the course with a flare-up of plantar fasciitis that forced him to withdraw after making the cut but facing 281⁄2 holes on Sunday because of poor weather with no chance of winning.
And even before last year’s Masters, he confessed to reporters, “I don’t know how many more I have in me.”
I would love to think Tiger’s veteran guile and experience give him a puncher’s chance at Augusta, a second-shot course that also benefits players who know where to miss in a game that’s all about missing. That local knowledge of the hidden geometry around Augusta’s famously subtle green complexes is what helped him claw back into contention and win the 2019 Masters.
Tiger finished the first round in 2019 outside the top 10 and still won, a rare feat the moderator
of his Wednesday news conference emphasized in a way reminiscent of Eminen’s clueless buddy listing all of his embarrassing shortcomings before his big rap battle in “8 Mile.”
“Thank you for telling me I started outside the top 10,” Tiger said with a smirk.
But this isn’t 2019 and Tiger isn’t 43 coming off a top-five finish and a Tour Championship victory a few months before that. It’s five years later and Augusta National has just gotten 10 yards longer. It’s now a staggering 7,555 yards — a full 630 yards longer than it was when Tiger won his first green jacket in ’97 — with Masters chairman Fred Ridley saying Wednesday the course will likely reach 8,000 yards in the near future under current equipment standards.
The future and the end is inevitable for all of us. But for Tiger’s competitive career, especially at the Masters, it’s growing perilously closer with each aching step he takes on a course he once humbled and that now grows beyond his grasp.
If nothing else, we should all try to enjoy watching what may be one of his final attempts to reach back and find just enough to remind us of what we used to see so often.