When people that know me ask me why the world of sports is my greatest passion in life, my answer is always the same…
Sports never stop producing moments that cannot be written. Moments that the mind simply cannot comprehend until they have actually been witnessed. You think some of the stories that Hollywood comes up with are insane? Commit yourself to watching sports for just a year and you’ll understand that the real world is capable of manufacturing moments that even the most ambitious screenwriter would deem too extreme to compose.
Eli Manning’s Giants overcoming the undefeated Patriots in the Super Bowl in 2008, the LA Kings going 16-4 in the 2012 NHL playoffs as the eight-seed in the West, the Red Sox becoming the first (and still only) team in MLB history to come back from down 3-0, and doing so against their arch rival New York Yankees, en route to their first World Series in almost a century. I could start writing an article right now about all of the moments that I’ve witnessed that qualify here, and I’d still be writing as I took my final breath.
When people ask me this question 30 years from now, I won’t bother to give the same generalized response. I won’t talk about these moments as a combined group that has accumulated throughout my life. I won’t make reference to how Hollywood couldn’t think of the things sports give us, and I certainly won’t mention the Red Sox, the Giants, or the Kings.
No. When people here forth ask me for the reason that sports have complete possession of my soul, my answer will be short and simple…
“April 14th, 2019.”
I will forget my own birthday before this date is removed from my consciousness.
It was almost 11 years ago that a one-legged Tiger Woods won the US Open at Torrey Pines, which prior to April 14, 2019 was his most recent major victory. I was 19 years old at the time, and remember crying my eyes out as I watched the single greatest moment of my life as a sports fan to date. I remember like it was yesterday, my childhood hero making that ridiculous par save on the 72nd hole, and then hobbling and grimacing his way through what became a 19-hole Monday playoff to overcome Rocco Mediate.
If he could win a US Open, hacking it out of the thickest rough these guys play all year, on a leg that structurally more closely resembled a toothpick rather than a human limb, then just wait until he’s healthy again. Forget 18 majors. Tiger could hit 20, 25, even 30!
Now, you don’t need me to remind you that the last 11 years haven’t turned out that way for Tiger. His knee and back surgically repaired on multiple occasions, full years spent away from the game of golf, a massive sex scandal, issues with pain medications, and a stack of doubters growing with each passing day. Just a short list of the many trials Tiger has endured since he last stood atop the golfing mountain.
For what it’s worth, I never vocally waivered from my belief that this day would once again occur. My answer throughout this impossibly difficult period for Tiger has always been that he will win, at the very least, one last major. But to be perfectly honest, internally even I had my doubts. Tiger Woods defined my childhood as a sports fan. He’s more the reason for my unrelenting love for sports than any other athlete or team, and it isn’t close. Perhaps this is why I kept my true feelings so close to the chest. If I never actually said it aloud, it couldn’t really be how I felt.
This man is my favourite athlete of all time, and he always will be. He is the GOAT of all the GOATS. Forget Brady, Messi, Gretzky, Jordan, and Nicklaus. Tiger tops the list. I’ve been waiting 11 years for today, for the opportunity to say these three words without anyone pushing back, because not even the biggest Tiger haters have any grounds for denying a fact that surely is dominating sports conversations around the globe this week…
Tiger is back.
Now I will delve in to what I trust will be the most enjoyable article to write I’ve experienced to date. Together, let’s now take a closer look at what just occurred. Let us now investigate what it took for Tiger to get that fabled 15th major. Let us look at the 2019 Masters, the great Tiger Woods’ return to prominence, and the most remarkable sports moment that I’ve ever seen.
There is an old adage in golf that has always rung true. You can’t win a golf tournament on Thursday, but you can lose it. Thursday has never been Tiger’s favourite day, with a long history of struggling out the gate before finding his magic as the week goes on. However, as more time passes and Tiger continues to age I think it’s safe to say that Thursday’s are getting more important with respect to his chances of winning tournaments. Coming from way behind probably isn’t in the cards anymore, even for Tiger Woods.
Luckily for Tiger, no one struck the ball better on Thursday at Augusta. In fact, I’ll just say this now, no one struck the ball better all week, save perhaps for Francesco Molinari’s opening three rounds.
If not for several missed short putts, Tiger’s name is at the top of the leaderboard after day one. Even more impressive is the fact that he played early in the day, when birdies were tougher to come by. The course was relatively soft all week, keeping big numbers at bay. However, it seemed as though the folks at Augusta saw this as an opportunity to experiment with the flag positions on Thursday. Despite the softer conditions, everyone was having issues going low until the last few groups. Everyone but Tiger. The putting story was more of the same for Woods on Friday. It’s safe to say that Tiger would’ve been at least a couple of shots ahead of the field entering the weekend if he could have rewarded his ball striking and gorgeous wedge play.
Let me just briefly pause here and let that sink in. Tiger Woods won this tournament while missing the majority of his putts from 5-10 feet. In Tiger’s heyday, these are the putts that were largely automatic. In the era before PVR, Tiger having an important five or six footer for most people meant the perfect time for a bathroom break or a snack preparation. While he made a couple bombs and possibly the greatest lag putt I’ve every seen on the 9th hole on Sunday, the short and mid-range putts were absent all week for Tiger.
Tiger can’t even practice this area of his game with the vigor he once did, surely factoring in to his struggles on the greens throughout the week. His back won’t permit hours on the practice green hunched over, perfecting the stroke that millions of us avid fans have fantasized about emulating. In order for this 43 year old man to beat the prolific pack of talent he did this week, without the guarantee of knocking home the short putts, he had to hit the ball just about perfectly for four straight days. But hey, this is Tiger Woods, and that’s just what he did.
Is it shocking that Tiger won the Masters, 14 years after his last one, without being elite with his short putts?
Yes.
Am I surprised he found a way to overcome this deficiency?
Not even a little bit.
This is Tiger Woods we’re talking about. No matter what area of his game is struggling, his will never waivers. Despite having emerged victorious in 80 PGA events prior to this Masters, Tiger’s determination and thirst for victory remains unmatchable. Besides, while he has lost his ability to make all five-footers look like tap-ins, there was another part of the “old Tiger” that reemerged this past week…
His unparalleled ability to escape.
While Tiger gave away a bunch of short birdies and par saves in the opening two rounds, he also avoided any of the big numbers that have plagued him in the past 11 years. He was way left on 14 in each of the opening two rounds, and yet found a way to birdie the par-4 both days with a pair of unbelievable recoveries from the trees. Since the end of Tiger’s unprecedented run of success, getting himself into trouble on the golf course has often meant the same as it does for everyone else, trouble.
Not the case at this Masters. This was that same Tiger Woods I grew up watching. The guy that can take his most trying circumstances in a tournament and turn them into his most brilliant moments. This week at Augusta, for Tiger, bad tee shots seemed to produce as many birdies as bogies, a staple of this man’s legend. And he recorded no worse than bogey in his 72 holes.
If Tiger winning this Masters wasn’t enough, the field he took down to do so was one of the most impressive in major championship history. It is much harder to win golf tournaments in 2019 than it was in the 2000s. As I’ve written in a recent article (see my discussion of Rory McIlroy), golf has never had so much elite talent at any given point in history., and a lot of those elite talents found themselves on the first page of the leaderboard. After day two, Tiger was sitting at six-under, tied with rising star Xander Schauffele and Dustin Johnson, the number one player in the world.
One shot better than this group was a five-way tie for the lead at seven-under. PGA champion Jason Day, British Open champions Francesco Molinari and Louis Oosthuizen, Masters champion Adam Scott, and Brooks Koepka, who had won three of the previous six majors he entered.
Five way tie at the top, five major champions.
Tiger haters always had to reach for criticisms during the man’s decade or so of terror, and one of them was always the quality of his immediate competition in many of his major victories. When Tiger beat the likes of Rich Beem, Bob May, Chris DiMarco, and Rocco, many people would argue that he was being gift wrapped titles. It was never a good argument, and this week just completely eliminated them from the realm of relevance in any future conversations about Tiger’s career. To win this Masters, after all those years and all those surgeries, against a long list of the world’s greatest players, well, even the most staunch Tiger detractors have to admit that there is just something different about this man.
Saturdays in golf tournaments are known as “moving day.” Sundays are a completely different beast. While there is always immense pressure throughout majors (and players will tell you that the Masters is in a league of its own in this regard), Saturday is the last day to make a big charge without the microscope that is on every single stroke on Sunday. Tony Finau and Webb Simpson, a budding superstar and another major champion, seemed to have received the memo. Both guys went out and fired a tournament best 64, launching both of them onto the leaderboard’s top page heading into Sunday. Molinari, who was paired with Tiger in the final round at the British last year when he won his first major title, continued his remarkable display of control on moving day with a brilliant 66, giving him a two-shot edge on Finau and Woods heading into Sunday.
Tiger struggled through the opening stretch of holes on Saturday, and I’m sure the feeling was amplified when hearing birdie and eagle roars around the entire golf course. But after bogeying the 5th for the third consecutive day, Tiger was off to the races. Three straight birdies from 6 to 8 got his party started. Then, like the seasoned vet he is, he played the horrifying stretch from 10 to 12 with three pars before lighting up the remainder of the back nine like we’ve seen him do so many times before.
The anticipation for Sunday was immense. I hardly slept Saturday night, because this is all about me, of course. Still, all I could think about was how he should be in the lead. Again, those damn short putts! If he were to lose the tournament from there, all those putts that used to be no-brainers would surely haunt me (not him) forever.
To intensify matters, Tiger had never won a major championship without at least a share of the lead heading into Sunday. Tiger woke up Sunday morning having to come from behind for a major victory for the first time, against probably the best leaderboard he’s ever had to overcome for a major title, and he had to do it at Augusta a record 14 years since he was last presented a green jacket, and just two years after he allegedly stated that he was contemplating giving up the game entirely.
A challenge suited for one athlete, and one athlete only.
Out of fear of approaching thunderstorms potentially forcing the tournament to a Monday finish, the folks at Augusta decided to break the mold and play threesomes starting on both nines, first thing Sunday morning. This meant that Tiger would be paired with Tony Finau, who entered play tied with Tiger at 11-under, and Francesco Molinari, the seemingly unflappable Italian who was looking to claim his second major from the same group as Tiger in ten months, beginning the day two strokes clear of his playing competitors. One group ahead was Brooks Koepka. I can’t speak for all Tiger fans out there, but that’s the guy that scared me the most going in. Koepka lives for these moments, and he was built for them. On the PGA Tour, Koepka has more wins in majors (3) than in all other events (2).
Tiger has gotten increasingly fan friendly during his rounds as he has aged. Not the case Sunday. He was dialed in. It was old school Tiger. If you were hoping to see some smiles and massive fist pumps, as we did the first three rounds, it wasn’t in the cards on Sunday. Sunday was all business. That calm, yet fierce intensity we got so used to throughout his dominance reappeared. The soft, yet vehement eyes tracking the flight of his purely struck shots. While he has certainly shown glimpses as of late, namely at the previous two majors and his breakthrough victory at East Lake, Sunday at the Masters was full-fledged, prime of his career, Tiger.
None of the leaders got off to particularly hot starts on Sunday. Molinari hardly missed a shot from Friday through Saturday (he only bogeyed one hole in the opening three rounds), but it became evident early on Sunday that his ball-striking was off. However, it is difficult to blame nerves for the change in the steady Italian’s game, as he poured in a handful of long par saves on Sunday’s opening nine. Brooks Koepka, who opened the day three back, was looking every bit as composed as usual and opened with a solid 35 on the front, firmly in contention.
Despite looking like the most comfortable player out there on Sunday, Tiger continued to offset some brilliant birdies with ugly bogies. He made a beautiful birdie on 3 to get within one of Molinari, before failing to get up-and-down for par on the treacherous par-3 4th, and then hit his fourth bad tee shot in four days on 5, a hole he bogeyed all four days. He then bounced back from those errors with birdies on 7 and 8, but gave another one back at 10 with an errant tee shot while watching Molinari convert an insane par save after short-siding himself left of the 10th green. Despite the sudden issues in his iron game, Molinari appeared completely unwilling to come back to the field…
With all the bogies stemming from poor tee shots and all the missed short putts, and so much talent surrounding him on Sunday, Tiger’s quest to complete the greatest comeback in the history of sports was in jeopardy. At the risk of sounding too cheesy, the rarest moments in sports history more often than not require some assistance from the universe (David Tyree’s helmet catch in the Super Bowl against the Patriots comes to mind here). In Tiger’s case, all the assistance from the golf gods that he would require on Sunday was concentrated, appropriately, at a section of the course known as “Amen Corner.”
The 12th hole at Augusta is named “Golden Bell,” and I doubt I need to remind any readers of the significance of this short par-3. Augusta is well-known for its swirling winds. Every player in the field spends an inordinate portion of their day looking up at the tops of trees, or watching players in nearby groups play their approaches, attempting to get some sort of read on the wind direction and velocity. This task has always been its most challenging on the tucked away 12th, and the consequences of getting it wrong have proven catastrophic for more Masters contenders than any other hole in the world of golf.
Sunday at this Masters was no exception.
Molinari, Koepka, Poulter, Finau. Four elite players, all four on the top page of the leaderboard, all four in the water at 12. Hell, Molinari’s wasn’t even close. He almost flew it into the drink, a good 15 yards short of his target. Four of the final five players to play the 12th dunked ‘er, everyone but Tiger. Any doubts I had about my childhood idol completing this unfathomable task had vanished. Suddenly, despite still being in a three way tie at the top as he walked off the 12th green, this Masters belonged to Tiger Woods.
Throughout his prime Tiger consistently showcased the strength of morphing blemishes from his opponents into daggers. At this Masters, the calamity at Golden Bell served as the blemish, and Tiger’s following four holes would prove to be the dagger.
With rain falling as he stood on the 13th tee, Tiger lost control of his footing as he took a violent swing with the driver…
Right down the center.
A safely placed iron shot and a two-putt birdie kept Tiger’s name tied atop the leaderboard.
He played the final par-5 of the tournament, the 15th, perfectly as well. Fairway off the tee, long iron to the center of the green, two putt birdie.
After all the wild tee shots, all the short putts, and everything Tiger has gone through, he took the outright lead for the very first time in the event with three holes to play. One more birdie would all but clinch the tournament, and like we’ve seen countless times before, Tiger would waste no time.
A perfectly placed 8-iron on the 16th hole caught the slope about 6 inches beyond the hole-in-one line. Tiger would tap in for his birdie and a two-shot lead, and merely need to avoid a blowup from there to claim major number 15. He tapped in for bogey on 18, and the greatest comeback in sports history was complete.
His eruption as he removed his ball from the cup on the 72nd hole, his embrace with his mother and children, his stride through the patrons from the green to the clubhouse, all moments that will be relived at every Masters from now on… and it’s a damn good thing too because my eyes were filled with tears as it happened in real time. After winning all 14 of his prior majors starting with the lead on Sunday, Tiger’s most remarkable achievement of his illustrious career was his first major victory when trailing through 54 holes.
Something new from a man we thought had already shown us everything.
Monday morning quarterbacks everywhere started looking ahead almost instantly. Is Jack’s record in jeopardy once again? With an upcoming PGA Championship at Bethpage and a US Open at Pebble, how many could Tiger win this year?
I’m not going to discuss what this win could mean for Tiger’s future in golf. I already know this isn’t the end of the story. Besides, trying to project what happens next would be a disservice to what we just witnessed. In fact, this moment is actually bittersweet for me if I’m being honest. This is the peak. Sports won’t stop producing the moments I opened this article discussing, but this one simply cannot be beat.
To all the golf fans of the world, the impossible return to glory for Tiger Woods is finally a reality. Record it, watch it over and over again, and please don’t move past it and think about what it could mean down the road. Appreciate this moment for what it is, because, at least for me, it can’t get any better than this.
And to Tiger. Congratulations you steely-eyed giant of sport. Thank you for the greatest moment in sports that these eyes will ever see. Thank you for April 14th, 2019.