Robert F. Bukaty/Associated Press
He won’t shoot the lowest score.
And he won’t slide the green jacket on outside Butler Cabin.
But make no mistake, golf fans. Tiger Woods has won the Masters.
Already.
Oh sure, it may be someone else basking in the glow of a Jim Nantz interview come Sunday evening at Augusta National, but this tournament was over just past 11 a.m. Thursday when the greatest talent in the game’s history stepped to the first tee and ripped a drive a few steps short of a fairway bunker.
The roar that erupted minutes later when he drained a 12-footer to save par was a fitting mic drop.
It was a red-shirt flashback from a man in a purple turtleneck.
And before we get much further, let’s make sure we get the vocabulary correct.
Don’t call it a comeback. This is a full-on sports miracle.
Lest anyone think that’s a label that ought to be reserved only for Al Michaels in the Olympics or any time the New York Mets are relevant in October, let’s look at the facts.
The guy hadn’t hit a competitive shot in 508 days—which is nearly 10 years in dog time and probably close to that when referring to a golfer plenty old enough to have sired the current No. 1 player.
But he hadn’t spent those days since November 2020 merely lounging near the Florida coast or working the phones to get his precocious son Charlie an exemption to PGA Tour age limits.
ROBYN BECK/Getty Images
Rather, he ended that year with a microdiscectomy, which, for the laypeople, is clinically defined as a back surgery to soothe a herniated disc that involves removal of “a portion of the intervertebral disc—the herniated or protruding portion that is compressing the traversing spinal nerve root.”
It was Woods’ fourth such procedure.
The first three came prior to spinal fusion surgery in 2017.
Oh, spinal fusion surgery, you ask?
That’s just a “welding process,” according to the good folks at the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, with an aim toward fusing together two or more vertebrae so that they heal into a single, solid bone with a goal to eliminate painful motion or restore stability to the spine.
The idea a middle-aged man could get out of bed to make a sandwich after all that, let alone compete with relevance at a course most can’t handle on a video game, would be enough for lofty praise.
But as anyone outside a Wi-Fi-bereft cave for the last 14 months already knows, there’s more.
The vehicle Woods was driving just weeks after the latest back work was mangled to the point where the “jaws of life” were needed to get him out after an early-morning crash, and the subsequent day’s headlines and Twitter feeds yielded words typically saved for those on the brink of death.
Ringo H.W. Chiu/Associated Press
Not those beating six of the world’s top-10 players across golf’s most storied 18 holes—while still bearing scars from surgeries to repair comminuted open fractures to his right tibia and fibula.
Comminuted, incidentally, means producing multiple bone splinters in medical parlance.
Still, if you’re not one to genuflect simply for cheating mortality and playing hurt, we understand.
In that case, we’ll just focus on the fact that he’ll begin the weekend within nine strokes of leader Scottie Scheffler while all but a smidge of the 972 players ranked ahead of him—including heavy-hitting frenemies Brooks Koepka and Bryson DeChambeau—will be watching on CBS.
He’s 46 years old, by the way. Which means Koepka and DeChambeau were 6 and 3 when he won his first jacket in 1997. And 28 and 25 when he won his fifth—and 15th major—in 2019.
They have five majors between them and zero at Augusta. By the time Woods was Koepka’s age, he’d won three Masters among his eight majors and created the still-unparalleled Tiger Slam.
In other words, the resume-comparison game is already a no contest.
And with the way he’s suddenly playing, it could get more one-sided.
A one-under 71 on Thursday gave way to a two-over 74 on Friday—a second round on the verge of implosion after four bogeys in the first five holes before he got one back at No. 8, saved a vital par with a knee-knocking five-foot putt and hit a brilliant approach within two feet for another birdie at No. 10.
Jamie Squire/Getty Images
Augusta’s patrons responded with another roar.
The kind only legends warrant.
“Just look at the reception,” broadcaster Michael Breed said on the Featured Groups live stream at Masters.com. “It’s an appreciation not just for what he’s doing today or yesterday but for what he’s done for years—and for years here at Augusta National.
“We forget just how incredible it is that he’s here. Think of what he went through and how he’s rehabbed. He’s worked as we know he can work, and now they’re following him at Augusta National.”
The aura of his favorite major helped Woods sharpen focus enough to reach the first tee after 17 months on the sidelines, and it’s hardly a reach to suggest—with another four weeks of recovery time—that he’d at least be within range of serious contention at the PGA Championship next month at Southern Hills in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where he won the Wanamaker Trophy by two shots in 2007.
He earned a pair of points in the 1999 Ryder Cup at Brookline, Massachusetts, site of this year’s U.S. Open in mid-June and he’s already a two-time winner—2000 and 2005—in the Open Championship at St. Andrews, where this year’s event will take place a month later from July 14-17.
So, prospects for a summer of allegiance seem at least promising based on past performance.
And even at 40-to-1, 50-to-1, and 40-to-1, respectively at DraftKings, who’d be willing to bet he’s done creating miracles—even with a leg held together by rods, plates, and screws.
“He’s Tiger Woods, so I’m not worried about watching him hit a ball ever because he’s the best player I’ve ever seen play,” Fred Couples, the 1992 Masters champion, told CNN. “He’s won so many times, and he’s just not a guy to go do something mediocre.
“He’ll compete, and he’ll be ready to roll.”
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