AUGUSTA, Ga. — Tiger Woods limped up the 17th fairway lined eight deep at midday Monday, a failing god at golf’s most heavenly site, surrounded by worshippers whispering their worries.
“Oh, he looks ... OK,” one patron said to his wife. She looked at her man like he was crazy.
Woods had been humping Augusta National’s hills for two hours. He’d hit six approach shots off the course’s uneven fairway lies. He’d spent an extra 15 minutes at every undulating green, chipping and putting to the hole where it was cut and to spots where he knew holes would be from Thursday to Sunday — if, by some miracle, he makes it to Sunday on one leg again.
Woods so badly shattered his lower right leg in a car accident in February of 2021 that he nearly died, and nearly lost his lower limb. It took the most advanced genius of medical science and technology to save the limb, with rods, pins, and screws, some of which remain. The greatest athlete in the history of the sport is now trying to compete as a primitive Cyborg.
“The mobility, it’s not where I would like it,” Woods said, “but I’m very lucky to have this leg. It’s mine. Yes, it has been altered, and there’s some hardware in there, but it’s still mine. The ability and endurance of what my leg will do going forward will never be the same.”
Then, there’s the pain.
“I think my game is better than it was last year at this particular time. I think my endurance is better,” he said. “But it aches a little bit more than it did last year.”
That’s a problem.
He used the resolve of refugees and single moms to rehabilitate to the point that he can walk without a cane. He needed every iota of the strength and balance that made him the greatest golfer in history to swing a golf club without falling over. Finally, he needed his surgeon’s hands and his criminal’s cunning to make him competitive with the best group of golfers who’ve ever lived.
Tiger has won 15 majors, 82 PGA Tour events, and 107 events worldwide, but his most remarkable records involve making cuts — that is, finishing the first two rounds of a tournament in approximately the top half of the field, which earns the right to play the last two rounds. At his peak, from 1998-2005, he made 142 consecutive cuts, 29 more than Byron Nelson.
Then Tiger made one cut in a row. It was just as impressive. He hopes to be relevant one last time.
“I don’t know how many more I have in me,” he admitted.
Last year, after 14 months of painful healing, after nearly a year and a half spent synching his ruined leg and his ruined back, Woods made the cut at the Masters. He shot 1-under in Round 1, which tied for 10th, then shot 2-over Friday and made the cut. By three strokes.
“And then it got cold,” he said, with a rueful laugh. He was 12-over the final two days. The forecast for Augusta, Ga. predicts a cold front stalling over the riverside city that will drop 3 inches of rain over a 48-hour period beginning midmorning Friday.
Nevertheless, the feat remains as breathtaking as anything he’s ever done. That includes winning the 2008 U.S. Open at Torrey Pines in an 18-hole, fifth-day playoff over Rocco Mediate with a broken leg. That includes winning the 2000 U.S. Open by 15 strokes at Pebble Beach, and winning the 1997 Masters at a then-record 18-under par as a 21-year-old, a feat so offensive to the green-jacketed members that they spent the next decade trying to Tiger-proof Augusta National. That includes overcoming ailments and issues and, after an 11-year majors drought, winning his 15th major here in 2019 at the age of 43.
Last year, he was asked after the tournament if this ranked as one of his finest hours. He replied: “For not winning an event, yes.”
Tuesday, he was asked where his 2022 performance ranked on the pantheon of his incomparable feats. He replied: “I still would have liked to have gotten the W, but I didn’t, but I think I got my own smaller version of that.”
He lied then. He lied now. He lied to us. He lied to himself. Finishing 47th at 13-over in 2022 was his finest hour.
Any 40-something-old guy with a bad back and creaky joints will tell you that what Woods, on this golf course, with those injuries, is beyond compare to everything else he’s done. That 218-yard 6-iron out of the fairway bunker on No. 18 at the 2000 RBC Canadian Open? Child’s play.
That chip-in at No. 16 at the 2005 Masters? Yawn.
That putt on No. 17 at the 2001 Players Championship?
It might have been “better than most,” but even announcer Gary Koch would agree: Thirty-six holes of major championship golf played at 1-over on one 46-year-old leg.
You can argue that the Tiger Slam and the 142 cuts might be better aggregate feats, but playing through blinding pain for a lost cause is the kind of one-off performance from which legends are born. Especially since it’s probably not going to happen again. And everybody knows it.
This is his 25th Masters. Through his knee issues, back surgery, domestic disaster, addiction, and the accident, it is the first Masters at which he wasn’t terse and fiery and hyper-focused on winning. He seemed resigned to irrelevance.
He told tales of playing practice rounds with past champions Raymond Floyd, Seve Ballesteros, and Jose Maria Olazabel, where they shared secrets of chipping with 8-irons and 4-irons. Once the sport’s manliest ironman, on Tuesday, he mentioned playing on the PGA Tour Champions with a “buggy,” or golf cart, twice.
Woods hosted and played in the Genesis Invitational in February, ironically, the site of his day-after rollover crash in 2021 (he did not play that year). He backed into the weekend at the Genesis but faded on Sunday. Notably, the tournament was played at Riviera Country Club, which is as flat as Tiger’s belly. He said that, in the future, he will likely play only the Genesis and the four majors, and the major he’s most likely to succeed at is the Masters.
Woods says he has shotmaking ability to contend at Augusta National. He can’t practice like a maniac anymore, but he can replicate Augusta National’s chips and putts in his backyard, and he can replicate uneven lies on approach shots at his home club, the Medalist, back in Jupiter, Fla. He knows Augusta National the way most people know their sofas.
“If there’s any one golf course that I can come back, like I did last year, it’s here,” Woods said. “Just because I know the golf course.”
“He looks good,” said Rory McIlroy, who played with Tiger on Monday. “You know, if he didn’t have to walk up these hills and have all of that, I’d say he’d be one of the favorites. It’s just that physical limitation of walking 72 holes, especially on a golf course as hilly as this.”
So unless you hear bulldozers rolling up Magnolia Lane on Wednesday night, know that the best you can ask from Tiger is for four days of major tournament golf instead of two.
Again.
