Thirty years ago, Tiger Woods began to become Tiger Woods, the golfer who, at his best, looked like the greatest player of all time. That was when he won the first of his three consecutive U.S. Amateur championships. After that, and until his life and career began to change one Thanksgiving night during a bumper car ride in his own Florida driveway, he won 14 majors as a professional, in addition to those three amateur championships.
In the second half of his career, he won only one other major, the 2019 Masters, one of the greatest moments his sport has ever known, or any sport has ever known. So this is a second act that no one could 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 looked as old as Muhammad Ali again when he lost to Larry Holmes in Vegas, when Holmes was young and Ali was anything but young.
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 48, one of the most famous this country has produced since Ali. He was the one who came along at the tail end of Michael Jordan’s prime, and at the height of his talent, his fame and his brand as the biggest winner since Michael, he was bigger than anyone.
But today, because of how things changed that night in 2009 and a real-life car accident in Southern California that could have killed him a dozen years later, he has become in many ways golf’s 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’s a prisoner of the sport he plays, a sport he now limps out of because he chose not to limp out of it.
That is his right, one hundred percent. He has earned the right to have the career he wants, thanks to the extraordinary first act of his career, at the end of which we thought he could surpass Jack Nicklaus’ 18 major titles and finish with 25 or more. Colin Montgomerie has no right to tell him to retire, as he did in the run-up to this Open Championship at Royal Troon, because no one has the right to do that.
Montgomerie’s comments prompted this response from Tiger, in case you missed it:
“As a past [British Open] “I’m a champion, I’m exempt until I’m 60. Colin is not. He’s not a former champion, so he’s not exempt, so he doesn’t have the ability to make that decision. I do.”
Give Tiger this: While he may not be able to play like he used to, he’s still a trash-talking champion. He can still walk that path, even if it’s a lot slower than he used to.
Yet the fact is that he never really recovered from the damage done to his legs by the February 2021 accident. He has now missed the cut in the last three majors he has played. He has had to cut his schedule drastically because of his physical condition, and that cutback has him showing up on the toughest golf courses on the planet without any rehearsals to speak of. It shows, in the way his age shows. Ben Hogan once came back, with his own body deeply injured, after the car he was driving was crushed by a Greyhound bus, playing the best golf of his own career afterward, even though he only played six or seven tournaments a year. Hogan was 36 when he and his wife had that accident. Woods was 45 when his car went off the road that morning in 2021.
And when you look at everything that has happened to Tiger over the last 15 years, keep one thing in mind: He wasn’t yet 33 when he won his 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 give him nine more than Nicklaus’ 73.
Then came Thanksgiving 2009. Then he found himself in his driveway that night, asleep when the police arrived, this after his SUV crashed into a fire hydrant and his wife allegedly smashed the car window with a 5-iron because the doors were locked while he was inside. Then came all the reports of infidelity, so much so that his legendary winning reputation was shattered like someone had taken a golf club to destroy it. He went 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 more than 11 years since that Open at Torrey Pines. Finally, there was the Ranchos Palos Verdes crash in a Genesis SUV, an accident that has never been properly explained or investigated. All we know is that he was apparently going about 75 mph when he lost control of the car. He was lucky to be able to walk again, much less play golf. Yet he returned to normal, as he did after all his surgeries.
Here he is now, talking Friday about his love of the 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 a sore elbow, and inevitably being just another pitcher. This is what it would have been like if Joe DiMaggio had kept playing after hitting .263 with 12 home runs in his final season as a Yankee. This is what it was like with Willie Mays at the end.
I can’t tell you whether Tiger will be playing on the Champions Tour when he’s 50, whether his pride will allow him to go around in a go-kart, which is allowed on that circuit. When that time comes, he’ll do things his way again.
Nobody ever had a first act like his in golf, not young Bobby Jones, not Nicklaus, not anybody else. He was, for those first 15 years, like a rocket to the moon. Now we see what happened to him in the next 15 years. That second act. Tiger Woods keeps playing through the pain, no doubt about it. It’s getting more and more painful to watch.
CARLOS NEEDS A COMEBACK IN THE 2ND HALF, ENCOURAGING RAFA IN GOOD HEALTH IN PARIS AND ENOUGH TALK ABOUT SAQUON…
Carlos Rodon has the second half of the season to turn things around after his second season in New York and stop looking like the second coming of his old friend Javier Vazquez.
Or Jeff Weaver.
Or Sonny Gray.
Or JA Happ.
Or…..
Well, I’m sure you have your own list of Yankees starters who were supposed to be game-changers and didn’t.
Incidentally?
Yankees fans need to understand something about their owner:
He likes things the way they are, even at a time when his team has been to just one World Series in two decades.
He likes her presence.
He loves his TV ratings.
And as long as Hal likes things the way they are, nothing will 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, isn’t it?
My favorite part was Peter Navarro going straight from prison to the podium.
It would be a wonderful thing at the Paris Olympics if Rafael Nadal was fit enough to make a career out of tennis and make this his final feat.
In the 1974 Wimbledon men’s final, 21-year-old Jimmy Connors defeated 39-year-old Ken Rosewall 6-1, 6-1, 6-4.
Last Sunday, Alcaraz, 21, was on course to beat Novak Djokovic, 37, who was doing just as poorly before this brief setback at 6-2, 6-2, 5-4, 40-0.
Brad Faxon is really good at talking about golf on TV.
And I’m a tough proofreader, believe me.
While I hope all of that continues with Jose Iglesias, even what we’ve gotten from him so far at Citi Field is one of the best stories of the New York baseball season.
I was in Barcelona for the Dream Team in 1992, and there will never be another team like that at the Summer Games.
But it will certainly be fun to watch Steph Curry and LeBron take on the world over the next few weeks.
People who think managers don’t matter in baseball anymore should try telling that to Alex Cora’s Red Sox fans.
One last thing about Tiger:
You look at his new clothing line and wonder if maybe he lost a bet.
I just wonder what kind of television rights deal the WNBA would have had if Caitlin Clark hadn’t come along at exactly the same time.
Sometimes I almost feel like Giancarlo Stanton was trading for himself.
I hope Simone Biles wins everything in Paris.
I’m not going to lie:
I feel like I have all the information I need on the Giants’ breakup with Saquon.
