As Tiger Woods Masters hype builds, the unthinkable is becoming thinkable
Will Tiger Woods play the 2022 Masters? Speculation is rampant.
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Everybody knows that Tiger Woods, 46 years old and recently inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame, went to Augusta on Tuesday. Everybody knows because most everything Woods does beyond the confines of his house is observed. Most everything he says gets scrutinized. Every tournament round he posts gets analyzed. Golf is addicted to Woods, and Woods is addicted to golf. And so we are now posing the same question Woods is posing to himself: Will he make his return to tournament golf next week at Augusta National?
The last scorecard he signed in a PGA Tour event was at Augusta. In fact, it was one of the most remarkable scorecards of his long career, even though he signed for 76. It came on Sunday, Nov. 15, 2020, the year the Masters was pushed to football season in deference to the pandemic. Woods was the defending champion.
In that fourth round, hopelessly out of contention, Woods made a 10 on the par-3 12th hole, the highest score he has ever made on any hole as a pro. Then, from there to the house, Woods went birdie, par, birdie, birdie, birdie, birdie. What we witnessed that day was not a cosmetic back-nine 39. He was showing his extraordinary do-not-quit will. He was showing it to all of us, including his son, Charlie, a promising junior golfer, who was on the Augusta premises Tuesday with his father.
Tiger Woods practices at Augusta National ahead of the Masters, fueling speculation
Somewhere in this is the underlying conflict of Tiger’s public life. He has always wanted his scorecards, and the shots we could see, to be the essential message of that life. That is, the scores and the shots would reveal the man as he wants us to see him. But the world demanded more.
And now we want to know: Will Woods play in the 2022 Masters? He could easily wait until Monday before the tournament, before the groups for the first two rounds are announced, before announcing his intentions.
What we know with certainty is this, not because of anything Woods has said, but because we’ve been watching him for more than 25 years: If he can play, he will. That’s in his DNA.
If he thinks he can shoot 140 for the first two rounds, he’ll play. He knows how to play weekend golf at Augusta National. There is nobody in the field who knows more about it.
You likely recall his mindset when he played the 2008 U.S. Open, when he won a 91-hole event while playing with stress fractures. His surgeon, his swing coach and his caddie were all opposed to him even playing in the tournament. Woods had other ideas.
His drive, and his need to dominate, is not normal. Upon winning the 2000 U.S. Open by 15 shots, he immediately suggested to a former USGA president that his winning margin should have been higher, that he had been robbed of an embedded ball drop. No matter what he says, no matter how hard he tries to disguise it, we know better: His appetite is insatiable. You can’t use your standards to try to predict what this guy will do.
Woods’ privately-owned plane landed at Augusta’s public airport at 9:30 Tuesday morning, and the Tiger Watch was on.
You may know that Woods did not play in a single 72-hole, full-field event last year. He didn’t play in January and February of 2021 because he was recuperating from back surgery, his fifth. He hasn’t played in a single 72-hole event since Feb. 23, 2021, because of his single-vehicle crash that day, one that, by his own admission, could have cost him his life.
The previous day, as part of his contract with the Discovery network, Woods gave a playing lesson to the actor Jada Pinkett Smith, wife (the whole world now knows) of the actor Will Smith. During the taping, Pinkett Smith said to Woods, “Your last Masters that you won, Will calls me and he says, ‘Turn the TV on right now, Tiger’s about to make history.’ I just get so emotional just thinking about it all. I’m like, ‘Tiger’s back! He did it!’”
“I don’t look at it like that,” Woods said. “I just look at the fight.”
A telling summation. Tiger’s father, before he became famous for being Tiger’s father, was shaped immeasurably by his experience as a U.S. army officer with combat experience in Vietnam. Tiger’s life has been defined by fights of his own making.
The morning after that segment with Pinkett Smith was taped, Woods crashed a courtesy-vehicle SUV. He was wearing a seatbelt and driving as fast as 87 miles-per-hour in a 45-m.p.h. zone. A police report noted that his gas pedal was virtually completely depressed when Woods’ vehicle struck a tree and came to a stop.
You don’t know this secret golf legend. But Tiger Woods and Jack Nicklaus do.
After the crash, Woods had several surgeries and months of bedrest and rehabilitation and did not make a single public appearance until December. Tiger goes into hibernation like nobody who has ever played this game. It’s one of the reasons his public appearances are so scrutinized, because they are so rare. And because they are so scrutinized, Woods does not want to make public appearances. As a math problem, it’s unsolvable.
In the few interviews Woods has given over the four past months, nearly all of them in environments he could control, Woods has consistently lowered expectations about what his future as a competitive golfer will be. He did not make himself available to reporters before his World Golf Hall of Fame induction on March 9. Wearing gym shorts and walking beside his son, Woods made a 10-step walk down a red carpet to enter the Hall of Fame ceremony without any hitch in his step. That in itself is remarkable because he has a rod inserted into his right tibia as a result of the car crash. But it’s also a limited sample pool.
Later, as the ceremony was getting underway and he was making his way to his seat and greeting others, Woods’ walking was obviously impaired. He often shifted his position as he sat through the long evening.
To play a round of golf at Augusta National in the Masters, including walking around the driving range and putting green and all the rest, a player is going to walk roughly six miles on hilly terrain. A player is going to be on his feet for at least six hours. The pace is slow. Rain delays are common. It’s almost unimaginable that Woods would be able to do that for four consecutive days of competition, plus whatever he does in the way of practice. But you may know what Jack Nicklaus has often said about Woods: never underestimate what he can do. Nicklaus has six Masters titles. Woods has five.
Last year, in an interview with Golf Digest, Woods said, “This time around, I don’t think I’ll have the body to climb Mount Everest and that’s OK.”
That’s what he said. That doesn’t make it true.
Michael Bamberger welcomes your comments at Michael.Bamberger@Golf.com
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