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AUGUSTA, Ga. — Psst…have you heard? Tiger Woods has every intention to play in the 2022 Masters. He even has a tee time — a 10:34 Thursday morning date with Louis Oosthuizen and Joaquin Niemann. It’s a lot to wrap your head around, given the horrifying condition in which he found himself just 14 months ago alongside a Los Angeles roadway. Would Woods walk again? Would he swing a club again? Would he compete again? Yes, yes and yes, we learned. And now, he is readying to play the Masters again.

The next big question: Can he win again? And should you bet on him to do so? Here’s some fodder to help inform your decision.

3 reasons to bet on Tiger Woods at the 2022 Masters

1. Tiger believes he can win

Among the consistent themes in Tiger’s career: He doesn’t just show up to events on a lark, with distant hopes of winning. He’ll enter a field only if he believes in his core that he can play at a high level and win. That was true at the 2010 Masters, when he returned post-scandal — facing more scrutiny than any athlete in history — to tie for 4th. It was true in 2019, when he stunned the world by winning his fifth green jacket. And it is true this week, where less than 24 hours before his scheduled first round tee time, it still feels inconceivable that Woods is playing.

On Tuesday, Woods was asked point blank, “Do you think you can win the Masters this week?”

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“I do,” Woods said.

His betting odds are the longest he’s ever faced at the Masters: around 50-1. That puts him in the same camp as the likes of Tony Finau, Tyrrell Hatton and Paul Casey. By comparison, Woods came into the 2019 Masters around 15-1.

2. He’s in his happy place

Augusta National is as close to a home game for Woods as any course this side of Medalist can provide. Five wins. Fourteen top-10s. Nary a single missed cut. In 90 career Masters rounds, his scoring average is a staggering 70.87. This course brings out the best in him — his shotmaking, his short game, his imagination. There’s little reason to doubt that won’t be the case for Woods again this week.

And did you see the size of the crowds that greeted Woods on Monday? He was like Jeter at Yankee Stadium, Favre at Lambeau and Steph at the Chase Center — all rolled into one. The galleries alone might will Woods into contention this week.

But roars can’t quell his pain, you say?  Perhaps, but Woods is accustomed to playing through significant discomfort. It’s become part of his M.O.

As he noted on Tuesday: “My back surgeries that I’ve had before and the stuff I had to play through, even going back to the U.S. Open when my leg was a little bit busted, those are all times that I can draw upon where I was successful, how I’ve learned to block things out and focus on what I need to focus on.”

Lifestyle

3. He still has all the shots

Woods has already proven this. Did you watch him and Charlie at the PNC? No one is suggesting the Ritz-Carlton Grande Lakes is Augusta National, but those two rounds in Orlando showed that Woods still has plenty of speed in his driver, launch in his irons and touch and feel in his wedge game. By all accounts, he has continued to exhibit those qualities in early-week practice sessions at Augusta National.

 “I’ve played several practice rounds with [Tiger],” Fred Couples said on his SiriusXM show Tuesday. “He is never ever out there to kind of go through the motions. So I knew it was game on and then he stiffed an iron and I’m not gonna go over every hole because, you know, I said that he drove it with JT a lot of times. He bombed one off No. 8 and … Tiger hit some kind of 5-wood on up there 10, 12 feet from the hole. So he had plenty of length, plenty of length.”

Added Cameron Davis, who played a few holes with Woods on Sunday: “He’s hitting it far enough to play the holes the way you need to play them. I don’t see any reason why he wouldn’t be able to put rounds together out here.”

Four rounds of competitive golf. Seventy-two holes. That’s all Woods needs to endure. From what we’ve seen and heard so far this week, incredibly it doesn’t feel like too big an ask. Like Woods’ chances to contend but not to win? You can get him at +450 to finish in the top 10, or at +145 to make the cut.

3 reasons not to bet on Tiger Woods at the 2022 Masters

1. Augusta National is no walk in the park

A year ago, our Rachel Bleier (now of the USGA) tracked exactly how taxing Augusta National is to walk. Armed with a Fitbit, she strolled all 18 holes and came back with these stats:

Total steps: 9,837
Average heart rate: 129 bpm
Total calories: 829
Total miles: 3.71
Total floors: 50

Those 50 floors, Bleier wrote, are “the equivalent of climbing to the top of the Washington Monument, or about two-thirds of the way up the 77-floor Chrysler Building, in New York City.”

Fitness

Does Woods have that in him for four rounds, plus however many practice holes he ends up playing? That is the question of the 2022 Masters. Sure, he may be able to endure whatever pain results, but if Woods’ leg(s) give out, he may have no choice but to surrender. Remember, the guy has a rod in his tibia and screws in his foot and ankle. There’s more technology in his body than there is in his golf bag.  

“Walking is the hard part,” Woods said Tuesday. “This is normally not an easy walk to begin with. Now given the conditions that my leg is in, it gets even more difficult.

“I’ve been in worse situations and played and won tournaments. Now, I haven’t been in situations like this where I’ve had to walk and endure what I’m going to try and endure, that’s going to be different.”

After a round or two or three, it’s possible his body could say no mas.

2. He hasn’t played a PGA Tour event in a year and a half!

Woods has a way of staying in the headlines, whether or not he’s playing, which has perhaps obscured the fact that he hasn’t made an official PGA Tour start since the 2020 Masters, 17 months ago. Woods closed that week with a wild 76 that could have been far worse if not for an inspired five-birdies-in-six-holes run to cap his round. That was the last time we saw Woods in action in an official 72-hole competition.

Drivers

Putting the injuries aside, how will he handle such a long layoff from the heat of this level of play? We don’t know. He’s the fiercest competitor the game has ever seen, but you still can’t blame the guy if he needs a round or two to recalibrate to the intense grind of Tour-level golf.

3. At some point the magic will expire

It’s easy to think Tiger Woods will keep awing us forever, that his self-belief alone will be enough to carry him to victory. Sadly, that can’t be true. He’s 46, and in a surgically repaired body that is nothing short of a modern marvel. Only Phil Mickelson (50) and Julius Boros (48) have won majors at a more advanced age. The end of Woods’ remarkable run surely is nigh. But like trying to sell a stock at its peak, it’s hard to know exactly when that moment will come.     

Of his ability to compete, Woods said Tuesday, “There will be a day when it won’t happen, and I’ll know when that is.”

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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.

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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.

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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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Tiger Woods began his quest for his sixth (!) green jacket on Thursday morning at Augusta National. He’s a regular there, as the 2020 edition is his 23rd career Masters start.

Woods is the defending champion, of course, but 25 years ago he was just another promising amateur making his Masters debut. Woods won the 1994 U.S. Amateur to grab a spot in the 1995 Masters, and he arrived as the next big thing. He played practice rounds with legends and, as is Augusta tradition, played the first two rounds with the defending champion, in this case Jose Maria Olazabal, who was impressed by the 19-year-old future star.

“I needed binoculars to see where he hit the ball,” Olazabal said back then. “On the 1st hole he flew his drive over the bunker on the right side — 280 yards on the fly.”

Woods’ first official hole of his Masters career on that Thursday morning got off to a good start, until an unfortunate turn with his third — he rolled his birdie try from about 25 feet off the green.

“I putted off the green right into the gallery playing with Ollie,” Woods said in his book, The 1997 Masters: My Story. “Chipped back up there and made the putt for bogey, and that was one of the most embarrassing moments that I can ever remember.”

“Great start to my Augusta career,” he added, sarcastically. “Hit the green in regulation, and then hit my first putt off the green.”

Woods played better from there, though, firing rounds of 72-72 and becoming the only amateur to make the cut. He tied for 41st. He missed the cut in 1996 but, in 1997, well — you know the story.

Tiger started this Masters at 10:55 a.m. ET on Thursday (after a weather delay). You can follow along here.

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Can Tiger Woods contend at this delayed Masters? Of course he can. Let’s go to the YouTube tape.

Here he is in the 2008 Masters, with his various body parts starting to fail him, with an upper body way too big to be supported by his spindly legs, yet he was able to finish second.

Let’s click on April 2010, his scandal in full bloom, but Woods, playing in his first event in half a year, was still able to finish in a tie for fourth.

Let’s revisit April 2011, when Woods, despite looking scoopy on some chip shots and missing some must-make short putts, still managed another T4 finish.

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And many of us have looked at the oddness of the 2013 Masters, when, with a rules imbroglio ringing in his ears, Woods was again able to finish in a tie for fourth.

Which brings us to last year’s Masters. (It only seems like it was held in another century.) Without playing anything like his best golf, Woods hung around for 68 holes — he was contending after the first day, after the second day, after the third day, and after the first 14 holes of the fourth day. Then he closed the deal on the final four holes. His 5-iron second shot on the par-5 15th was as pure as any iron ever hit in the history of the Masters. (Really, just to say he pured it is insufficient.) We all know what happened. Tiger Woods won his fifth green jacket.

Yes he can, to borrow a phrase from yesteryear. He can contend.

And if he can contend, he can win.

You, of course, could say that of dozens of players but you would say it most particularly of Tiger Woods. As Jack Nicklaus has said more than once, “When Tiger got himself in position to win, he remembered how to do it.” Throughout his career, when Woods contends, he wins with astonishing frequency.

But in your heart of hearts, do you really think he can pick up his sixth Masters title this week? In Las Vegas, Woods is about a 40 to 1 shot, while Jon Rahm and Rory McIlroy are going off at closer to 15 to 1. Woods’s play this year has been south of indifferent. He missed the cut at the U.S. Open at Winged Foot. He finished T37 at the PGA Championship at Harding Park. He didn’t look like himself. He looked different. And so has everything else.

Woods has been playing tournament golf, marching along fairways lined with fans, for more than a quarter of a century now — until this year. There were no spectators at Harding Park. There were no spectators at Winged Foot. There will be no spectators at the Masters. It matters. Crowd noise has been like jet fuel for him, prodding him to let his legend grow, as his father put it so memorably.

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It is true that Woods has been, often, the most aloof of golfers. But he has also been, as a golfing god, deeply connected to the screaming hordes. His successes have meant so much to us in part because we could see what they meant to him, in part because the story of his golfing life was so unusual and remarkable. Even if you didn’t know the details of the story, you knew the broad strokes, and that was more than enough. You could see the story — his life — on his face, in how he responded to the shots he played. You could see it in how he handled his wins, his opponents, his winner’s interviews. He was the new shiny thing for a long, long time.

But through this hideously long year, the pandemic part of it, Woods’s manner has been subdued. He’s been polite but not at all expansive in interviews. His game has shown not a hint of sparkle, except maybe when he rallied to make the cut at the Memorial. You haven’t seen him kicking in his divot holes with his customary flushed-that-one gusto. He looks thinner than he has in recent years, for a man who develops his game-day body with repeated visits to the gym.

Plus, he has had to deal with . . . life. Being a single father with children in school. Like millions of other people, he’s dealing with the various complications this pandemic has wrought. Tiger’s son and daughter have a new kid brother, after their mother had a third child last year. Tiger has been working with a ghostwriter on a memoir, a process that can be wrenching, if you’re willing to dig deeply enough to make the book worthwhile.

What a subject he could be for himself. It’s not like he’s led an easy life. His physical pain doesn’t ever take a day off. As for his psychic pain, it almost never comes up. Back, his book’s title, could be a place to explore it meaningfully.

Tiger Woods will be 45 at the end of next month. He carries more than we could possibly know. You see him walking down the fairway with his friend and caddie Joe LaCava, along with Justin Thomas and Fred Couples, and they’re all laughing about something, and it’s easy to forget that there is so much we don’t know. It’s easy to skip over all he has done and endured to get to where he is. Examination is messy.

If you’ve been watching Tiger over the years, you know he’s a good actor. You can see it even in his bit as the bored student, to Bryson DeChambeau’s overeager physics professor, in a TV spot for Bridgestone balls. Between takes, he told DeChambeau, “You’re overthinking it, dude.” Woods, always, wants to get done.

Part of his excellence has been the relief and the freedom tournament golf has brought him. This week’s Masters will be almost like a working vacation for him. Few places in the world give Woods more freedom than the manicured acreage inside the braided green-and-white gallery ropes at Augusta, where he won his first major professional title at age 21, in 1997.

His victory at Augusta last year, No. 15, came 11 years after his 14th, at the 2008 U.S. Open, where he hobbled around Torrey Pines for five days. It came nine years after his private life was exposed in a way nobody deserves, the Stiletto Parade appearing daily for a while in the New York Post and the National Enquirer. His 15th win came two years after his drug abuse was revealed by way of a roadside arrest, in the early hours of Memorial Day, 2017. It came after a long litany of surgeries.

His victory at Augusta last year was cathartic for millions for one reason above all others: A man came back. He screwed up but did not give up.

He rose above his pain and his humiliation. Who among us would not want to do the same?

But . . . can he win?

Probably not.

Which means of course he can.

There are some serious longtime Tiger-watchers out there. I’m thinking of Bob Harig of ESPN, Jaime Diaz and Brandel Chamblee of Golf Channel, Doug Ferguson of the AP. Also Steve Williams, Butch Harmon, Tim Finchem, Mark O’Meara. Plus, Phil Knight and Phil Mickelson and Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer, may he rest in peace. Earl Woods, the same. Via one particularly memorable and odd 2010 Nike spot, Earl talks to Tiger, and to us, four years after Earl’s death. I have learned a lot about Tiger from all those people.

But here I’d like to turn the focus to the insights of a famous golfer and golf broadcaster who does not immediately take a spot on the Student of Tiger roll. And that golfer and broadcaster is Nick Faldo. Sir Nick.

During a brief stint as a caddie on the European golf tour in 1991, I would sometimes hear players talk about Faldo, but never with any warmth or admiration, except of course for his golf ability. He was considered a high prince of self-absorption.

But I have found in recent years, whenever I have sought out Faldo for his insights into this or that, that he is insightful, knowledgeable and, in his own way, introspective. For a book about Tiger’s comeback that was published in March, I sought out Faldo. From here on out, I’m citing my own Faldo stuff, on (ultimately) the subject of the day here, can Tiger win this week. Here goes:

Faldo told me at the end of 2018 that he felt Tiger could win a Masters, if he had four days of warm weather. Four months after Tiger’s win, I asked Faldo to analyze Tiger’s chances of winning a 16th major. Few people have seen Tiger’s career at closer range, or so dispassionately, and few people have a better understanding of Tiger as a golfer and a man.

Tiger could win another major, Faldo said, but everything would have to fall his way, as it did at Augusta. Warm weather again, good mental and physical health, swing in a good place, a course with no rough. In other words, as Faldo saw it, there continued to be only one major Tiger could win again — the Masters — and then only if the moon was in the seventh house.

And even if Tiger did win a sixth green jacket, Faldo said, it would never mean as much to Woods as his fifth did, 14 years after his fourth, with his daughter and son waiting for him. During the frenzy of victory, and on the CBS broadcast, Faldo had said, “That will be the greatest scene in golf forever.”

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It was some statement, given their icy relationship.

The wall between them has benefited Faldo as a commentator. It’s been his liberator. On the Saturday of the 2013 Masters, Faldo was the most prominent golf person to say publicly that Woods should withdraw from the tournament. “Greg Norman said, ‘That’s the best call you’ve ever made on TV,’” Faldo said. “It’s not complicated. If your scorecard is wrong, you’re out of the tournament. You’re at dinner, you get a call from a tournament official. ‘What did you do on 12?’ ‘Oh, my ball was in the ditch, and I dropped it to the left.’ ‘Yeah, that’s not a lateral. You’re DQed, sorry.’ ‘Oh, okay.’ You take it on the chin. We’ve all been there.”

Faldo sees Tiger only now and again. Faldo’s own manner has changed markedly since his prime. He’s approachable. When he was the number one player in the world, he was not. He sees a similar evolution in Tiger, to a degree.

“I think he’s tried to open up, but he’s led essentially a weird life, to be honest,” Faldo said. “You’re a golfer from age three, you follow your father’s guidance, you’re under the spotlight, you create your own world. I think of what Charles Barkley said: ‘I was on his list, and then I wasn’t.’ Tiger’s ever-changing. Two years ago he shows up and suddenly he’s hugging everybody.” Almost everybody. “I never got my hug,” Faldo said.

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We were standing on the back of the range at Liberty National. Brooks Koepka was the only person hitting balls. Faldo watched him smash another and said, “Tiger’s not going to beat him, not if they’re both playing out of the rough.” Earlier in the year, at the 2019 PGA Championship at Bethpage Black, Woods was asked to compare himself to Koepka when he was Koepka’s age, 29. “Does Brooksie look like a young me?” Woods said. “No. I wish. I was never that big. I was 130 pounds.”

Faldo got big and strong in his prime, as Tiger did later. Faldo never dominated the game the way Tiger did, but he knows what it’s like to be the best player in the world, and he knows the isolated life you lead in an attempt to stay there. Faldo was also once a single man in his mid-40s with young children. Faldo has been married and divorced three times. He has three daughters and a son.

“When you’re on a mission, like Tiger was, like I was, you’re at the front of the ship, and you’re creating a wake, and sometimes that wake isn’t pretty, but still you plow on,” Faldo said. “Then your children grow up, and that changes you. You learn to forgive and to ask for forgiveness.” You never hear Faldo get introspective like that on TV.

Faldo talked about his growing sense of gratitude. “I don’t think you find gratitude,” he said. “I think it hits you. Seeing Seve Ballesteros decline, I realized I was lucky. There were two major components to Seve’s decline. First, he lost his golf game, then he lost his health.

“I realized that I had had my time, that I had given it my best with the knowledge I had. I had a 20-year opportunity. When it’s over, you realize it goes by like that.”

He snapped his fingers.

“And now it’s 30 years ago that I was really good. That’s half my life ago.”

His broadcasting career is now as long as his playing career was.

Accessories

“I didn’t know myself then,” Faldo said. “I was a driven golfer. That’s it. If I met people for five seconds and they thought I was an ass, then I was an ass to them for the rest of their lives.”

Faldo was talking about himself, but Tiger was lurking.

When Nicklaus won his sixth Masters in 1986, at age 46, he said, “I’d quit now, but I’m not that smart.” Faldo knows how hard it is to say goodbye to the thing you do best and, at least for a while, better than anyone else in the world. “There was a five-year period when I couldn’t play like Nick Faldo could play, and it hurt like hell,” he said. “You want so desperately to go out on a high note. You actually dream of doing that. You say to yourself, If I could just win this one and leave and wave and say, ‘Thank you very much.’“

He tried to imagine Tiger doing that. Just walking away. But he knows that it’s impossible. The drug is too powerful. If you win — if you place, if you show, if you top-10 — you want to keep going. Tiger, Faldo said, would someday find the same thing. There was no way to warn him, to tell Tiger that his own half decade of golf-career purgatory was coming. But it will. Faldo was certain of that.

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And then what do you do? The question has been asked forever. There’s the era you own, when you’re in it, and then there are all the days after it, and you have to fill them, too. Michael Jordan found that out. So did Muhammad Ali, Ted Williams, Jesse Owens, the boys in the boat, Seabiscuit, Bobby Jones and all the others. The days do get filled. But it won’t be the same as playing and winning and all that invincibility.

Faldo spoke of the talent, determination, and nerve that tournament golf requires. It takes talent and determination to contend. It takes nerve to close. And nerve dies through lack of use.

“Tiger spent 11 years climbing Mount Everest without oxygen,” Faldo said. From his U.S. Open win at Torrey Pines in 2008 through his fifth green jacket in 2019. “Basically, for 11 years, it all went wrong. And then there was a chance, and he grabbed it.”

That’s what impressed Faldo most — what Tiger did with his chance at that Masters. “To win a Tour event after a five-year hiatus is incredible,” Faldo said. “But to win a major 11 years after you’ve won your last?”

Nick Faldo is a good talker, but he had no words.

Michael Bamberger welcomes your comments at Michael_Bamberger@Golf.com

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Finally. The Masters — the final major of a particularly odd year of golfing majors — has arrived. 

This year’s Masters is chock-full of storylines: Will Bryson DeChambeau be able to maintain his stellar form for two majors in a row? How will Tiger Woods fair as the returning Masters champion? How different will it be without patrons on the course?

However, before even worrying about storylines and potential winners, it’s important to know who is actually competing in the event — as we’ve just seen with Sergio Garcia, the list of participants can change in the blink of an eye.

Here is an alphabetized list of all participants in the 2020 Masters.

2020 Masters field (As of Nov. 9, 2020)

Byeong Hun An 

Abraham Ancer

 John Augenstein 

Christiaan Bezuidenhout

Angel Cabrera 

Rafael Cabrera Bello 

Patrick Cantlay

Paul Casey 

Cameron Champ 

Corey Conners

Fred Couples 

Jason Day 

Bryson DeChambeau 

Tyler Duncan 

Tony Finau

Matthew Fitzpatrick

Tommy Fleetwood 

Rickie Fowler 

Dylan Frittelli 

Abel Gallegos 

Lucas Glover 

Lanto Griffin

Adam Hadwin 

Justin Harding 

Tyrrell Hatton 

Max Homa 

Billy Horschel

Charles Howell III 

Sungjae Im 

Shugo Imahira 

Trevor Immelman 

Jazz Janewattananond 

Zach Johnson 

Dustin Johnson 

Sung Kang 

Si Woo Kim 

Kevin Kisner 

Brooks Koepka 

Jason Kokrak

Matt Kuchar 

Andrew Landry 

Bernhard Langer 

Nate Lashley 

Marc Leishman 

Yuxin Lin 

Shane Lowry

Sandy Lyle 

Hideki Matsuyama

Graeme McDowell 

Rory McIlroy

Lukas Michel

Phil Mickelson

Larry Mize 

Francesco Molinari 

Collin Morikawa 

Sebastian Munoz

Kevin Na 

Andy Ogletree 

Jose Maria Olazabal 

Louis Oosthuizen 

C.T. Pan 

Victor Perez 

J.T. Poston 

Ian Poulter

Andrew Putnam 

Jon Rahm 

Chez Reavie 

Patrick Reed 

Justin Rose 

Xander Schauffele 

Scottie Scheffler 

Charl Schwartzel 

Adam Scott 

Webb Simpson 

Vijay Singh 

Cameron Smith 

Brandt Snedeker 

Jordan Spieth 

Henrik Stenson

James Sugrue 

Nick Taylor 

Justin Thomas

Brendon Todd 

Erik van Rooyen 

Jimmy Walker 

Matt Wallace 

Bubba Watson 

Mike Weir 

Lee Westwood 

Bernd Wiesberger 

Danny Willett 

Matthew Wolff 

Gary Woodland 

Tiger Woods

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The post Golf fans rejoice: A Tiger Woods docuseries is coming to HBO this fall appeared first on Golf.

The post Golf fans rejoice: A Tiger Woods docuseries is coming to HBO this fall appeared first on Golf.

Mark you calendars, because another big-time sports documentary is coming to your TV.

Journalist Armen Keteyian recently joined the Burst Your Bubble Podcast with hosts Josh Owen and Kyler Donaldson and dropped one nugget most golf fans will be pumped to hear — a Tiger Woods documentary is coming to HBO later this year.

We knew a Woods doc was in the works, but now we have a tightened-down timeline. Keteyian teamed with Jeff Benedict to co-author the New York Times best-selling biography Tiger Woods, which was released in 2018, and around the same time it was announced that Alex Gibney and his Jigsaw Productions was developing a docuseries based off the book. While Keteyian wasn’t able to unveil too much about the project, he did give us some important details.

Keteyian said the series will consist of two two-hour episodes and air on HBO later this fall. Matthew Hamachek and Matthew Heineman are the project’s principal directors and Keteyian and Benedict are executive producers.

“I can tell you that it’s scheduled to come out in the fall,” he said. “Don’t be surprised if it airs right around the Masters in November. If you are HBO, that’s the smartest and best place to do it. I can tell you this, I have seen it now several times, including this morning when I watched the final two hours. It’s a fabulous job.”

Keteyian said many of the key figures interviewed in the book will appear on the docuseries, including others who weren’t. He mentioned appearances from people like Nick Faldo and Bryant Gumbel, as well as long-time journalists Karen Crouse of the New York Times and GOLF’s Alan Shipnuck and Michael Bamberger.

“I’m really proud of it,” Keteyian said. “I know it’s going to be a big deal for HBO, so you know, we got our fingers crossed for sure.”

For more on Keteyian and Benedict’s book, Tiger Woods, click here.

“In the end, we wrote a book that I think is going to stand the test of time,” Keteyian said. “There’s been interest in Hollywood and for a scripted series based on the book, so I think for me, that book is as proud a personal accomplishment because Jeff and I poured, I can’t even tell you how many thousands of hours into it. Even though we were paid a nice amount of money, we laughed and said in the end we were probably working for minimum wage or less than minimum wage.”

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The post 10 things I’d never noticed about Tiger Woods’ iconic 2005 Masters chip appeared first on Golf.

The post 10 things I’d never noticed about Tiger Woods’ iconic 2005 Masters chip appeared first on Golf.

Welcome back to the Tiger Woods YouTube Project, where we’ve made it to what is generally considered to be the greatest shot of Woods’ career. Of his career!

Here’s the thing about The Chip. It happened in April 2005. YouTube was founded in February 2005; it took off several months later. The Chip was timed perfectly to live on YouTube forever. If we’re talking about Tiger Woods and we’re talking about YouTube (We are! That’s why we’re here!) then it’s impossible not to talk about The Chip.

Tiger Woods YouTube Project, Chapter 22: The Chip

Chapter 21: Tiger’s headcover

The thing is, you’ve already seen The Chip. You’ve seen it every April for the past 15 years, at the very least. We’re hardly breaking any new ground there. You already know what happened next — Woods won his fourth Masters. So let’s not bother to fully contextualize it. Let’s just watch it again, more carefully this time, and see what it is that we notice.

1. Verne called it.

Woods was hardly the only one to hole out on 16 that Sunday. If you rewatch the broadcast you’ll recall that just minutes before Woods and Chris DiMarco strode onto the 16th Trevor Immelman made an ace. That led to a particularly prophetic line from Verne Lundquist:

“Well, if form holds, either DiMarco or Woods will hole out when they get to 16.”

You know the rest. Yeah, sure, Lundquist was probably talking about another hole-in-one, but we’ll still give him credit for the most famous hole-out of the modern era.

2. The rough behind that ball was serious.

The shock value of this chip comes from the visuals; the far-left starting line, the slow trickle, the perfect Swoosh pause at the edge of the cup. But what about that lie?! I didn’t even think the rough at Augusta got that long. The ball sitting on the fairway up against the edge of that rough made this shot what it was.

3. He hit this thing low!

Here’s part two of this brilliance. Were it not for his lie, Woods would hit this high and soft with some spin. But the way he skips it up along the slope ups the degree of difficulty (and the artsiness required) to the next level.

4. What’s up with this guy’s hat?

Are those his credentials on top of his bucket hat? What’s going on there? Masters tickets from over the years? Is this a thing?

5. Take out the tree and he would have had the perfect view.

Imagine you’ve secured a ticket to Sunday at the Masters, Tiger Woods is leading, you’ve been posted up by No. 16 for hours and finally Woods hits his ball long and left, directly in front of you — only for your view to be completely blocked out by a tree. But kudos to the good folks involved in getting him a proper view of the action. Smiles all around.

6. Did these three have money on DiMarco or what?

Woods’ ball falling brought the entire crowd roaring to its feet — except these three fellas in the front row. DiMarco’s uncles, maybe?

7. Did these two have money on Tiger?

On the other hand, the gentlemen in yellow and pink stood out as the most jubilant among a jubilant crowd.

8. Stevie took a bow!

As Woods and caddie Steve Williams stood together as DiMarco putted out, Williams took a mini-bow. Whether it was to someone he saw in the stands, someone he’d spotted in the camera tower, a walking media member — who knows? He doffed his cap, caught up in the exaltation of the moment. Pretty funny.

DiMarco hit a good putt, for the record. It just breaks a lot.

9. DiMarco enjoyed the chip, too.

Okay, that’s not necessarily right. But whether DiMarco wanted to compliment his foe or just felt he had to say something, it was interesting to watch that dynamic play out. DiMarco was sizing up his putt from behind the hole as Woods was fishing his from the cup.

“Good shot,” DiMarco told Woods.

10. DiMarco was 7 shots clear of the field.

Even with what happened after The Chip — DiMarco’s missed birdie try, and Woods’ bogeys at 17 and 18, and his birdie in the playoff — consider that he finished at 12 under. Luke Donald and Retief Goosen were next at five under. Imagine a Woods-less world in which Chris DiMarco was the Masters champion by seven shots.

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The post My Golf Obsession: The 2012 Tiger Woods Masters video game appeared first on Golf.

The post My Golf Obsession: The 2012 Tiger Woods Masters video game appeared first on Golf.

Quick! Before real golf comes back, lemme tell you about how virtual golf has carried me these last few months.

Not only has Tiger Woods beat me many times in the last week — it happens playing a video game with his name in the title — I’ve also been beaten by both Anthony Kim and Bio Kim. Yes, During these COVID times, the virtual world in Tiger Woods PGA Tour 12 (Masters Edition) has become my sick and twisted reality.

When you fire up a 9-year-old video game, you’re signing up for surprises, and Bio, now infamous for making an obscene gesture and earning a year-long suspension in Korea, was one of those surprises. (Kim was a full-status Tour pro in 2011 and an absolute menace on the video game.)

Tiger Woods PGA Tour 12 is a relic in that it offers an advanced, segmented journey for the single player (called Road to the Masters) but isn’t sophisticated enough that it employs constant online updates. You’re stuck with the stars and flameouts (see: Jeff Overton) of 2011, and with the rare approval from Augusta National, you can actually win golf’s holy grail: a green jacket.

That feature is one of the greatest things ever offered to the virtual golf space. Augusta National, litigious as ever, has repeatedly shut down online course designers who recreate Amen Corner and the flowery campus on their gaming platform. Thus, this EA Sports video game was a priceless asset during the 2020 Masters that Never Was. Here in Small Town, Wisc., in my parents’ basement, even I could win a green jacket.

To do so, I created my best impression of Boo Weekley, a camo-pants-wearing par machine who gets up-and-down from everywhere in his bright red Presidents Cup sweater. And because I have too much pride, we cranked the difficulty to Tournament Mode. No power boosts for Boo. No button-smashing for maximum backspin. No wearing a green jacket unless you’ve earned it. Mr. Weekley, we’re on the tee.

After breezing through the amateur tour, Weekley notched a win in his third Nationwide Tour start. He may have limped in to a 74, but his win unveiled a fun battlefield promotion: Straight to the PGA Tour! If only life were this easy.

Over the course of many seasons, we progressed slowly but surely toward Augusta National. At one point [insert SpiderMan meme], my Weekley even chased after the real Boo Weekley. (I couldn’t catch him.) Eventually, back-to-back wins at the Mediterranean Open (course fits my virtual eye) helped push our hero into the top 100 in the world, earning him that precious invite to Augusta.

Tiger Woods video games have existed for more than 20 years now, first launching with Cyber Tiger on Nintendo 64 in 1999. (I bought that game, too. Mark O’Meara chipped in too often.) Like most EA Sports franchises, the mid-2000s editions are cherished to this day, but they are also plagued for being so damn easy. It may have been fun shooting 18 or 20 under on Tiger Woods 2004, reaping the benefits of Peak Tiger and never making a bogey, but thankfully the 2012 version of the franchise added some realism. As it turns out, winning the Masters on Tournament Mode is tough as hell!

Look no further than the game defaulting Boo to a non-camo look once we stepped foot on the grounds. Seriously, the game stripped me of my clothing creativity and gave us a Jeff Maggert-esque grey-over-khaki outfit. That doesn’t pair too well with hunter green.

Anyway, my virtual Weekley is a brilliant ball-striker, similar to the real-life version, but struggles woefully on the green. In our run-up to Augusta, only once had we played 18 holes bogey-free. Green reading is an intricate business on Tournament Mode, as in real life. At virtual ANGC, you’re lagging everything to the hole, even the 5-footers. One hard lip-out begets another. No more chiding Ernie Els for 2016. To offset some of the difficulty, this is a one-round tournament. It’s hard enough to lead after 18 holes, let alone 72.

Our conquest began with a bogey but quickly turned around as Boo holed out from a greenside bunker on No. 2 for eagle. Back to red numbers! They say that every winner at Augusta National gets some breaks to go their way. Perhaps that’d be one of ours.

Our friend Bio Kim signed for a solid 69. Beatable, but solid. We would add a birdie on 3 to move within one of the lead before going bogey-birdie-bogey-birdie on holes 4-7. What a rollercoaster! After a shameful par on the 8th, this video game showed off its realism again. When my cute wedge into the 9th was just a little TOO cute, it zipped off the false front just like Greg Norman’s in 1996. I’ve watched way too many Masters broadcasts to forget that could happen. Nonetheless, a cheeky pitch helped me make the turn at two under. ALIVE AND WELL.

A brief appreciation of the 10th hole: it should still be the first playoff hole. It’s a great par-4. It requires two very good shots to get close and and an even better putt to earn the birdie, which is exactly what Boo did on this day, tying our man for the lead. It was a brief, tense moment for our virtual hero before the nerves got to him and he pumped his drive into the trees left on 11.

After punching out and pitching on, it was a bogey on 11. One shot back, reaching that treacherous 12th. The 12th wouldn’t be so bad if 11 and 10 didn’t precede it. Those holes being difficult means you teeter on the edge of losing control, only to earn a trip to a swirling wind tunnel.

Unfortunately, Boo Weekley had his Jordan Spieth moment. The ball flew far enough, but it just wasn’t on target, leaking out to the right. One more yard and it may have stayed dry, but it rolled back into that devilish creek. Mr. Weekley would make his triple bogey.

While Weekley and I made a mess of Amen Corner, Phil Mickelson made a classic charge — remember this is 41-year-old Lefty — to finish at four under, beating Eduardo Molinari of all people in a playoff. Mickelson’s fourth green jacket, but his first virtual green jacket. What an honor!

Boo tapped in for a par on 18 and a one-under 71. It was good enough for tie for 11th place and for an invite to next year’s event. We’ve got plenty of work to do until then, and as long as we’re stuck at home we’ll be doing it.

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The post At 43, Tiger Woods rediscovered his game, his love for it, and true happiness appeared first on Golf.

The post At 43, Tiger Woods rediscovered his game, his love for it, and true happiness appeared first on Golf.

We all figure it out, eventually, that what really matters most is not winning or losing but being in the game. You might not know that when you’re ten or twenty or thirty. But sooner or later you do, and if you get it at 43 (Tiger Woods’s age) that’s not too late. Because it’s never too late.

Woods is smack-dab in the game, contending, captaining, mentoring, not long after he had just about written himself out of it. And he’s never seemed happier, don’t you think?

Yes, this magazine and website, so devoted to helping you cure your slice, is now expanding its editorial mission. We’re taking it on: golf happiness, and life happiness. Or maybe we should say, as Jefferson did, the pursuit of happiness. He was all but predicting a Big Band composition, recorded by Larry Clinton and his Orchestra, called “Sometimes I’m Happy,” from the 1957 album Music for Tired Golfers. And so, after surveying top teachers, reading various books and watching It’s a Wonderful Life, we have devised a Big Three get-happy cheat sheet: 1) Be in the game, 2) Do for others, and 3) Live with gratitude.

News

Tiger Woods to host exclusive amateurs-only competition this fall

And with that in mind, we will now attempt something both ridiculous and meaningful: To assess the happiness of a man who is a significant figure in the long history of prodigy studies. We’re not saying Tiger Woods is a Mozart or a Picasso or Marie Curie, but he surely has a place on the APL (all-time prodigy list). He didn’t ask to live his life on TV, but that is what he’s done, and millions of people have seen it unfold, from The Mike Douglas Show (not yet three) to where he is today. His path to happiness had to be challenging. But wouldn’t it be a waste if we didn’t try to learn something from it?

Okay.

Let’s say you were on hand for all of Tiger’s major wins except one. Let’s say you first saw him in person when he won his second U.S. Amateur in 1995. Let’s say you’ve seen him at this winning-team press conference or that one, wearing this team uniform or that one. (You’re me, for this paragraph, if you can stand it.) And in that period, almost 25 years, many of them lousy with wins, the happiest you’ve ever seen Tiger Woods was at this year’s Masters — at the end of the second round.

Tournaments

Tour Confidential: Can Tiger Woods still win Player of the Year?

Yes, we’re talking about where he was two days before Sunday’s riveting high-wire act, the one that led to Butler Ceremony V. But let’s stay with that Friday, dusk coming on, a perfect Augusta spring night on deck. Tiger’s whole body was on high alert, his eyes and hands and brain most especially. He could almost sense the grass growing underneath his feet. Earlier in the week, Woods had had an intense and instructive practice-tee conversation with the great José María Olazábal about playing pitch shots off Augusta’s famously tight turf. But now the fairway grass was bordering on fluffy, and the greens were slow, and Tiger was making adjustments. When you’re firing on all cylinders—when you’re really in the game— you’re making adjustments on instinct alone. All the good shortstops and shooting guards and golfers will tell you that.

Woods’s first round was 70, two under par, but it had passing moments of looseness. On that Friday evening, he climbed the hill en route to the home green and a 68 that was close to airtight. We all know how good that feels. Not the 68 part, but how good it feels to be in control of your golf ball. How good it feels to be in a good place, period. He was getting the champion’s ovation. This was the guy who almost laughed when he saw a kid at the Players, one month earlier, wearing a T-shirt with his mugshot on it. It takes balls to meet your life head on.

Snapshot, cont’d: Tiger’s kids — athletic and alert — were in Florida, playing their sports and doing their school work, under the eye of their mother, Elin, Tiger’s former wife. Sam and Charlie couldn’t have a more committed mom and Tiger knew it, and he knew that she would say the same of him, as their father. Perfect? No, of course not. But committed. Doing good work on the road is always easier when you know there’s peace in the house. (Shalom bayit, as Mark Steinberg, Tiger’s agent, and Glenn Greenspan, Tiger’s spokesman, might have it.) The caddie beside Tiger on that Friday night, Mr. Joe LaCava, had contributed immeasurably to Tiger’s game and well-being, in ways that no electronic gizmo could ever measure. Joe did everything by doing nothing. That is, he didn’t quit. Hank Haney quit (2010). Steve Williams quit (2011). But Joe LaCava was not going anywhere. He spent several restless years reorganizing the garage at his home in Connecticut over the nearly half-decade when Woods’s schedule was erratic at best. But Joe did not budge for the simple reason that he loved Tiger, loved the feeling of being on Team Tiger and believed that Tiger would someday reclaim his status in the game — or die trying.

The Friday-night fans at Augusta, all of us dealing with the vagaries of life in our own lives, were plainly in his corner.

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In the wings, on that Friday night, were two other people, intentionally under the radar, who have contributed significantly to Tiger’s state of mind, and to the state of his play. One was Tiger’s wingman, Rob McNamara, on the payroll but more like, to use a phrase of their camp, Tiger’s brother by choice. Unassuming in appearance, relaxed in a realm that leaves many uptight, McNamara is a 70s shooter who has played hundreds of rounds with Woods. He offers observations about ball position, tips the guys in the locker room on Tiger’s behalf, and is a sounding board for questions about what tournaments to play and whether to put the 5-wood in the bag or in the trunk. The other person was Erica Herman, Tiger’s girlfriend for several years now and, yes, unassuming in appearance and relaxed in a realm that leaves many uptight. Herman, a manager at Woods’s restaurant, has a good rapport with Sam and Charlie, talks easily to reporters and fans, doesn’t seek attention, and knows that making any business work (the restaurant business, the golf business) requires obsessive attention to detail. When Tiger went to the Rose Garden in May, and the leader of the free world put a ribbon around his neck, Sam and Charlie were there, Steinberg and Greenspan were there, Erica and Rob were there. Tiger’s mother, Tida, was there, too. He was given the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and he brought the team. Tiger didn’t make this return to the game by himself. Not even close.

Back to Friday at Augusta. Tiger tapped in for 68, shook hands with his playing partners — Jon Rahm, 24, from Spain; Li Haotong, 23, from China — and considered the leaderboard. He was one shot off the lead, shared by five players. The applause in his ears was long and sustained. Respect! Tiger was getting the Nicklaus treatment, the Arnold treatment, the Lord Byron treatment. This response was way different from the pandemonium that greeted Woods when he won at East Lake, last September. That win was the lid of a pressure cooker hurtling through the roof, the noise of ten thousand relieved bros, desperate to celebrate something. The fans at Augusta were patrons in the true sense, the people who were in the game before Tiger and during Tiger and will still be there when Tiger is not. Tiger was smiling from ear to ear as he left that Friday-night green and crossed the broad lawn on his way to the scorer’s room. Tiger is a man prone to sarcasm, to distrust, to cynicism, to anger. At least, he has been. What I could see that night, what we all could see, was a contented man. When he was asked about that moment two months later, at the U.S. Open, Woods said, “Honestly, I don’t think there was any particular thought. Just that I was right there, in contention.” Right there. In the game. Beautiful. The only thing that would have been more poignant on Sunday than Tiger winning would have been Tiger not winning. In any event, the Friday-night fans at Augusta, all of us dealing with the vagaries of life in our own lives, were plainly in his corner. Tiger was smiling, for himself and for us. Man, the power of the small gesture.

Tiger Woods after sinking the winning putt at the 2019 Masters.

Michael Madrid/USA TODAY Sports

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Tiger has always done the big gesture well. Witness the good works of his foundation. But we really get measured, and revealed, by the smallest of them. Along those lines, and with Tiger in mind, I’ve had a series of conversations this year with Aaron Baddeley, the Australian golfer who led the 2007 U.S. Open at Oakmont through three rounds. Woods was in solo second, two shots behind him. They played in Sunday’s last twosome. Woods was built like the Michelin Man then, and he stood on that first tee like the gladiator he was, in that red T-shirt that could barely contain him. Baddeley, 26 then, wearing plaid pants and a brown shirt, looked like he had walked in from an AJGA awards luncheon. Baddeley, not shockingly, went for a number (80). For the next decade-plus, their relationship was little more than passing nods.

Then Woods returned to professional golf, in January 2018, about seven months after his risky, almost desperate fusion back surgery. And when he came back, Aaron Baddeley could tell that Woods was somehow different. He saw Woods at Torrey Pines and asked him if they could talk sometime about his surgery, because Baddeley’s brother-in-law, a retired roofer with unrelenting back pain, was considering the same surgery and was nervous about it. “Yeah, sure — happy to,” Woods said. In March, at the Players, on a putting green, Woods spoke to Baddeley for 20 minutes, in no rush to go anywhere, about all the ins and outs of his pain, his surgery, his recovery. That might sound like nothing to you, but for 20 years Woods was like a shark on Tour. Wherever he was, he wanted to be someplace else. “It was a real conversation,” Baddeley told me. “Because of what he told me, my brother-in-law had the same surgery. He wouldn’t have done it without Tiger’s endorsement.” The surgery worked. Aaron Baddeley’s brother-in-law has a new lease on life. Consciously or not, Woods was doing something for others. The power of the small gesture.

After his DUI arrest, Memorial Day weekend, 2017, Woods entered a rehab program, not for the first time, but things don’t always stick the first time. We don’t know what happened there, nor should we, unless Woods wants to share it. All we really know is what we see, with those TV cameras pointed at him, and what we hear, with those microphones below his chin. And how he looks and sounds is … happy. Not always, because that’s not possible. That’s not even a realistic goal. But when he won at East Lake, he said, “It was just a grind out there, and I loved every bit of it.” When he didn’t win the British Open in July ’18, he shared with us what he told his kids: “Hopefully you’re proud of your pops for trying as hard as I did.” When he shot that Friday 68 at Augusta he said, “It felt very good to be out there, doing what I was doing.” When he missed the cut at the PGA Championship in May, he said, “I’m the Masters champion and 43 years old, and that’s a pretty good accomplishment.” Brooks Koepka had just beaten him by 13 shots over two rounds, and Tiger Woods seemed more than fine. Larry Clinton — “Sometimes I’m Happy” — must have known the feeling. On our better days, so do we all, meaning Tiger, too.

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