AUGUSTA, Ga. — The misses and the fear spoke loudest in Tiger Woods’ latest run at fading glory. He isn’t playing to win. He’s playing to make the cut.
He’s hurting, and he’s aging, but still, it’s a strange thing to see.
On a perfect Thursday midday made for scoring, Woods limped around Augusta National, a course he used to own, his claws retracted, his teeth blunted, never coming close to a real Tiger roar from either him or his crowd. He shot 2-over on a day that — players posted red numbers, content to trust that the small, top-heavy field at the Masters would let him back into the weekend as long as he didn’t get too greedy. The top-50 and ties make the cut here, and he was on the line, tied for 54th.
In particular, he played Amen Corner like an amateur who was just happy to be there.
Woods pushed a 5-iron long and right and dead on No. 11, the first challenge of the most famous three-hole stretch in golf. He flexed his repaired right leg after that shot before he eventually made bogey.
“I was watching him from 11 tee, and it looked like he was hurting,” said Erica Mason, a former teaching pro from Cashiers, N.C.
She wore a black-and-orange Tiger Woods T-shirt and carried green binoculars to catch all the action. At 41, she and her husband George, a 44-year-old golf course superintendent, belong to the generation of golfers weaned on Woods; she had the “I am Tiger Woods” shirt, and posters, and head covers. They know golf, and they know Tiger, and they know they’re watching his final days of relevance. Woods seemed fine on the front nine but he struggled down the steep hill on No. 10.
“We noticed that last year, too,” George said. “When he goes down a hill, you can tell he’s dragging that thing.”
“I don’t know if he can make the walk around tomorrow,” she said. “I think it’s going to be his first missed cut.”
She’s right, of course. Woods has made 22 consecutive cuts as a professional, and if he makes it this year he will tie Fred Couples and Gary Player for the record.
It seems to be his main goal.
An ordinary three-par on No. 12 set up a power drive on the lengthened 13th hole that left him in right rough, unobstructed, just 218 yards from the stick.
And he laid up. Tiger Woods laid up.
He was playing to make the cut. He was playing with the leader, Viktor Hovland, and he trailed by nine. Hovland ripped his shot into the middle of the green. Two putts apiece later, Tiger trailed by 10.
Amen Corner was finished, and Tiger didn’t have a prayer.
He’d cut the deficit to eight before the final hole but he pushed his drive on No. 18 and left it hanging over the lip of a fairway bunker. He had to hit his approach with his reconstructed right leg in that bunker. It was a shot that most in the field wouldn’t dream of pulling off in their best days, but it was the sort of shot that made him Tiger; the sort of shot that won him 15 majors and 82 PGA Tour titles. Predictably, he couldn’t commit to the swing, fell back a bit, and dunked it into the greenside bunker on his way to a finishing bogey.
Did the leg affect the crazy shot on No. 18? “I’m good.”
How about a leg report? “Sore.” Pained smile.
He did deliver glimpses of greatness.
From the left rough on No. 10, Tiger hit a gorgeous, sweeping hook around a pine tree that landed 6 feet from disaster and left a 17-foot putt. As the ball curved, he peered around the tree’s trunk and under its boughs and struck the familiar Tiger pose: chomping on his gum, anxious, expectant, then satisfied.
He dropped a 27-foot bomb on No. 15 and, on his next stroke, stuffed his tee shot on No. 16 to go birdie-birdie. But putting and 153-yard irons off flat tees aren’t the problem. Accuracy with approach shots off the slopes and moguls on Augusta’s fairways are everyone’s challenge. It takes a lot of practice and a strong foundation to pull them off. Tiger now can afford neither.
“I didn’t hit my irons close enough today,” he said. “I didn’t give myself very good looks.”
He also three-putted twice, probably because he can’t spend hours practicing putting any more, another consequence of his battered physique.
Put together, this is regression from where he stood after the first round last year.
Woods was 1-under after 18 holes then, when the Masters marked his first outing after a car crash nearly cost him his lower right leg, and maybe his life. His game is better now, but his 47-year-old body seems to be deteriorating. Between the rods and pins and screws in that limb, his four back surgeries, and lingering foot and knee issues, it’s a miracle that we still get to see him play at all.
He shot 12-over on the weekend here last year. He made the cut at the 2022 PGA Championship but withdrew after shooting 9-over in the third round. He skipped the U.S. Open, then missed the cut at the 2022 British Open at St. Andrews. After several months off he played all four rounds at his Genesis Invitational in February, but seemed worse for wear afterward.
He was the worse for wear by Thursday evening, too. Thursday might have been the best we see him play for a long time.
He has a 1:24 p.m. tee time Friday. The local forecast calls for cold rain and possible thunderstorms around 6 p.m., right around the time Tiger would be playing his final three or four holes. It will be wet, chilly, and there might be stops and starts due to lightning.
That is the worst possible news for a guy carrying an extra 2 pounds of metal in a withered leg with a bad back that’s almost 50 years old.
Then again, this is Tiger Woods, and Erica Mason is coming back Friday:
“Never say never to him!”
Never say never, indeed.
