At 50, Tiger Woods’ future is a mystery. But he’s already delivered one powerful ending

There’s at least one milestone Tiger Woods hasn’t achieved just yet: turning 50. But that’s about to change. On Dec. 30, Woods will hit the half-century mark, an occasion we’re honoring here at GOLF.com by way of nine days of Tiger coverage that will not only pay homage to his staggering career achievements but also look forward to what might be coming next for a transformational player whose impact on the game cannot be measured merely by wins or earnings or even major titles. In our latest “Tiger @ 50” entry (below), senior writer Dylan Dethier revisits one memorable afternoon at Augusta National — which means something different now than it did then.

MORE “TIGER @ 50” COVERAGE: How much is Tiger actually worth to golf? | Will Tiger tee it up on the PGA Tour Champions? | Why Tiger’s 2000 bag still feels untouchable | Explaining Tiger’s famed “gate drill” | Tiger stats you’ve never heard

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I still remember the look on his face.

I’ve had the thrill of watching Tiger Woods hit thousands of golf shots across my time at GOLF, some from my couch but plenty others from up close. But one sticks particularly in my mind.

I remember because it was the 16th hole at Augusta National on Masters Sunday, a time and a place where Woods has made a habit of making magic.

I remember because this was 2020, and because the year before on this same hole Woods had stuck his tee shot inside two feet and all but clinched the green jacket, the most improbable and incredible of his 15 major championships.

I remember because this time his shot finished inside two feet, too, a different hole location but the same outcome. The ball kicked up a little piece of turf as it skipped forward and stuck. Nice 2.

I remember because I’d never seen a look quite like it, not even from Woods, intimidating intensity but somehow crossed with indifference, like every fiber of his being needed him to flag that shot but he received zero joy from doing so.

I remember because very literally three people clapped for the shot and because I was one of them. (Media types don’t generally do a lot of clapping, but in this case it felt like somebody should.) This was the November Masters, after all, the Covid-era, fan-free Masters, and the limited VIPs in attendance were clustered around the final couple pairings, including eventual winner Dustin Johnson, but I had a couple co-workers on that story and so I was free to track the back nine of the defending champion, to see if anything interesting happened on his way home.

I remember because of what Woods did on the 12th hole some 45 minutes before, finding the water short and then the water short again and then the bunker long and then the water short again and walking off with septuple-bogey 10, the first double-digit score of his PGA Tour career.

I remember because of what he’d done on the holes that followed, clinical golf en route to birdies at 13 and 15. In 2019 he’d birdied 13, 15 and 16 to open up a two-shot lead on the Masters field; in 2020 he was birdieing 13, 15 and 16 just to make a late, meaningless move up the final-round leaderboard. (It was also a reminder that nothing is meaningless.)

I remember because it was so quiet you could hear the ball land, so quiet you could hear the CBS producer on the ground relaying the next player’s club choice up to the tower.

“Scottie Scheffler: 7-iron.”

I remember because Scheffler talks about that round as a source of inspiration; it was his first time playing the Masters and it was his first time playing with Woods and while he’d seen his boyhood idol at his absolute lowest, he was now seeing his superpower up close, too.

“I kid you not, he hit still to this day three of the best iron shots I’ve ever seen hit coming into those last few holes. It was just unbelievable to watch,” Scheffler said earlier this year. “He puts everything he has into every shot that he hits on the golf course, which I think is a really underrated skill out here … There was never a moment in that round where he wasn’t going at it a thousand percent, which is a lot easier said than done.”

I remember because it was Shane Lowry’s first time playing with Woods, too, and because he echoes Scheffler’s sentiment that it was “one of the best lessons that I’ve ever got.”

“He’s the greatest golfer that ever lived, he has no chance to win the Masters, he makes a 10 on a par-3, and he tries his nuts off for the next six holes,” Lowry said later.

I remember because of the blurry disposable-camera snapshots I have of the moment; mostly the entire golf course was so quiet that I didn’t want to interrupt the silence with a big plastic click, but once Woods was on the 17th tee it felt like a moment worth capturing — even if my thumb snuck into the frame.

I remember because of what Woods did on the final two holes, too: he flagged iron shots and hit birdie putts with perfect weight that toppled over the edge and into the cup, capping off his finest finish to a round in his storied Masters career.

I remember because it felt like such an anticlimactic reception by the 18th green; Woods, the defending Masters champ and arguably greatest of all time, holed his fifth birdie putt in six holes but walked off the green to just a smattering of applause and a top-40 finish.

I remember because it feels more and more like that was the end.

I don’t mean to be dramatic. Woods has delivered new memories in professional golf since then. He’s made inspiring charges at cut lines, notably at Augusta National and in Tulsa, too. He’s played old places, like St. Andrews, and new ones like the SoFi Center. But that week in November 2020 was the last time Woods played a big-time golf tournament you thought he might actually win.

There was no way to know that at the time, of course. While Woods’ post-round press availability included an admission of just how hard this had all gotten — “No matter how hard I try, things just don’t work the way they used to, and no matter how much I push and ask of this body, it just doesn’t work at times,” he said — the next Masters was just five months away and he was gearing up for it.

At that point, Woods still seemed to have a competitive future. It’s easy to forget how good he still was entering 2020, after all. He’d won the 2019 Masters and the 2019 Zozo Championship, and even playing a limited schedule he was ranked No. 6 in the world at the end of the year. Then we saw Woods contend in his first start of 2020, at Torrey Pines, where he finished T9.

The rest of his 2020 wasn’t much good; Covid hit and that coincided with Woods’ body not fully cooperating, he skipped most of the non-major schedule and there was something off with the generation’s fan favorite showing up for fan-free tournaments, anyway. But in some ways the November Masters marked a chance to reset, with the promise of some return to normalcy in the new year. Perhaps that five-birdie flurry to finish had the potential to kickstart some offseason momentum.

That never happened. Woods underwent a fifth back surgery in January 2021. And in February came his horrific car crash on the outskirts of Los Angeles. It was a miracle that he was walking at all in the years that followed, never mind playing competitive golf. But that incident divided one Woods era from the one that has followed.

Woods turns 50 on Dec. 30, 2025. There are as many layers to him now as there ever have been, even if they’re different in composition. He underwent another back surgery in September; in his Bahamas press conference any future playing plans felt like an afterthought.

I swore in 2019 to never count Woods out, and I don’t plan on starting now. When I think of the end of his career it still seems like some future, nebulous date; the 2033 Open at St. Andrews, maybe, or the 2040 Masters, and who knows what miracles he’ll work between now and then? Still, in the last half-decade Woods hasn’t bettered that strange, inspiring T38 at the November Masters, the final major before everything changed. I can wish we’d gotten to see more of that version of Woods, who was working on his off-speed pitches but still had plenty of pin-seeking missiles in his arsenal. But that ignores reality. It ignores the fact that we’ve already seen the end of something special.

As far as ends go, though? You could do much worse than that shot, and that look, and the meaning behind them.

Dylan Dethier welcomes your comments at dylan_dethier@golf.com.