Tiger Woods first started becoming Tiger Woods, the golfer who at his best would look like the best who had ever played the game, 30 years ago. That was when he won the first of three straight United States Amateur Championships. After that, and all the way until his life and career began to change one Thanksgiving night with a bumper-car ride down his own driveway in Florida, he would win 14 majors as a professional to go with those three Amateurs.
Over the second half of his career, though, he would win just one more major, the 2019 Masters, one of the great moments his sport has ever seen or any sport has ever seen. So this has been a second act for him no one could possibly have anticipated when he won the 2008 US Open at Torrey Pines with a broken bone in his leg, a second act that took him to the British Open this week at Royal Troon, where he missed another cut at a major, and once again looked as old as Muhammad Ali did once when he was losing to Larry Holmes in Vegas, when Holmes was young and Ali was anything but.
He looked like Willie Mays as a Met.
Of course, Tiger Woods is still one of the most famous athletes in the world, even at the age of 48, still one of the most famous this country has produced since Ali. He is the one who came along at the end of Michael Jordan’s prime and, at the height of his talent and his fame and brand as the biggest winner since Michael, was bigger than anybody.
But now, because of the way things changed that night in 2009 and of a very real car accident in southern California that could have killed him a dozen years later, he has become in too many ways a golfing version of “Requiem for a Heavyweight.” Angelo Dundee, Ali’s legendary trainer and a boxing legend himself, once said that what happened to Ali late in his career and in his life was because he was a prisoner of his ability to take a punch. It’s different with Woods. He is a prisoner of the sport he plays, one he limps through now because he has chosen not to limp away.
That is his right, one hundred percent. He has earned the right to have whatever kind of career he chooses to have because of that career’s extraordinary first act, at the end of which we thought he might go blowing past Jack Nicklaus’ 18 professional majors, and end up with 25 or more. Colin Montgomerie doesn’t get to tell him to retire, as he did in the runup to this Open championship at Royal Troon, because no one gets to do that.
Montgomerie’s comments brought this response from Tiger, in case you missed them:
“As a past [British Open] champion, I’m exempt ’til I’m 60. Colin’s not. He’s not a past champion, so he’s not exempt, so he doesn’t get the opportunity to make that decision. I do.”
Give Tiger this: If he can’t play the game the way he once did, he is still a champion trash talker. He can still walk that walk, if so much more slowly than he once did.
Still: The fact of things is that he has never really recovered from the damage that accident in February of 2021 did to his lower legs. He has now missed the cut in the last three majors he has played. He has had to drastically reduce his schedule because of his physical state, and that reduced schedule has him showing up at the most difficult golf courses on the planet without any reps of which to speak. It shows, the way his age shows. Ben Hogan once came back, with his own profoundly wounded body, after the car he was driving was crushed by a Greyhound bus, playing the best golf of his own storied career after that, even when playing just six or seven tournaments a year. Hogan was 36 when he and his wife were in that accident. Woods was 45 when his car went off the road that morning in ’21.
And when you look at everything that has happened to Tiger over the last 15 years, keep something in mind: He wasn’t yet 33 years old when he won that 14th major at Torrey Pines. By the end of 2008, he had already won 65 professional tournaments, on his way to 82, a number that would tie him with Sam Snead for the all-time record, and giving him nine more than Nicklaus’ 73.
Then came Thanksgiving in ’09. Then he ended up at the bottom of his driveway on that night, asleep when police arrived, this after his SUV had collided with a fire hydrant and his wife had reportedly broken the window of the car with a 5-iron because the doors were locked with him inside. Then came all the reports of infidelity, so much his reputation as a legendary winner shattered as if somebody had taken a golf club to it. He went away to rehab for undisclosed reasons, came back, became Player of the Year again in 2013, winning five times even though he didn’t win a major.
But by the time he won the 2019 Masters, it had been over 11 years since that Open at Torrey Pines. Finally, there was the accident in Ranchos Palos Verdes in a Genesis SUV, one that was never properly explained, or investigated. All we know is that he was reportedly going around 75 mph when he lost control of the car. He was lucky to walk again, much less play golf. Still, he came back again, the way he did from all his surgeries.
Now here he is, talking on Friday about how much he still loves playing majors, even after finishing 14-over par. This is what it was like when Ali stayed in the ring too long. This is what it would have been like watching Sandy Koufax try to pitch through elbow pain, and inevitably being just another pitcher. This is what it would have been like if Joe DiMaggio had played on after he hit .263 with 12 home runs in his last season as a Yankee. This is what it was like with Willie Mays at the end.
I can’t tell you if Tiger will play the Champions Tour when he turns 50, if his pride will allow him to ride around in a cart, something permitted on that tour. When that time comes, he will do things on his own terms again.
Nobody ever had a first act in golf like his, not the young Bobby Jones, not Nicklaus or anybody else. He was, for those first 15 years, like a rocket to the moon. Now we see what has happened to him over the next 15. This second act. Tiger Woods continues to play through the pain, without a doubt. It just gets more and more painful to watch.
CARLOS NEEDS 2ND-HALF TURNAROUND, CHEERING FOR HEALTHY RAFA IN PARIS & ENOUGH ABOUT SAQUON …
Carlos Rodon has the second half of the season to turn around his second season in New York, and stop looking as if he might be the second coming of old friend Javier Vazquez.
Or Jeff Weaver.
Or Sonny Gray.
Or J.A. Happ.
Or…..
Well, I’m sure you have a list of your own of Yankee starters who were supposed to be game changers and weren’t.
Incidentally?
Yankee fans need to understand something about their owner:
He likes things the way they are, even in this time when his team has made one World Series in two decades.
Likes his attendance.
Likes his TV ratings.
And as long as Hal does like things the way they are, nothing is going to change at Yankee Stadium.
Wait, Davante Adams is going to be this year’s savior with the Jets?
The Republican Convention is really over now, right?
My favorite part was that guy Peter Navarro going straight from prison to the podium.
It would be a wonderful thing at the Paris Olympics if Rafael Nadal is healthy enough to make a run in tennis, and make that his last hurrah.
In the Wimbledon men’s final of 1974, 21-year-old Jimmy Connors sure did beat 39-year-old Ken Rosewall 6-1, 6-1, 6-4.
Last Sunday, 21-year-old Alcaraz was on his way to beating 37-year-old Novak Djokovic just as badly before that brief hiccup at 6-2, 6-2, 5-4, 40-0.
Brad Faxon is really, really good talking about golf on television.
And I’m a tough grader, believe me.
As much as I hope this all lasts with Jose Iglesias, even what we’ve gotten from him so far at Citi Field is one of the very best stories of the New York baseball season.
I was around in Barcelona for the Dream Team back in 1992, and there will never be another team like that in the Summer Games.
But it sure is going to be fun watching Steph Curry and LeBron take on the world over the next few weeks.
People who don’t think managers still matter in baseball should try telling that to fans of Alex Cora’s Red Sox.
One last thing on Tiger:
You look at this new clothing line of his and wonder if maybe he lost a bet.
I’m just wondering what kind of rights deal the WNBA would have made with television if Caitlin Clark hadn’t come along exactly when she did.
Sometimes I almost get the idea that Giancarlo Stanton traded for himself.
I hope Simone Biles wins everything in Paris.
Not gonna lie:
I feel as if I have all the information I need about the Giants breakup with Saquon.
