THIS LAST QUARTER-CENTURY has taught us that Tiger Woods accommodates himself for nothing but his own, ferocious need to win.
Woods’ latest compromise has been with his right leg, nearly lost in a car crash and now held together with what he gnomically describes as a “lot of hardware.” But watching Woods limp bleakly around Augusta National in the rain today made you wonder how much more bargaining with himself he can stomach.
Woods has always either won or competed, but today he merely played. And while that reality is acceptable to a gaggle of past champions around here, will it really be enough for him?
Woods’ competitive streak has never yielded to anything, including the Masters, which is run by a club demanding deference to their detailed etiquettes, traditions and quiddities.
He has always said the right things about the majesty of the Augusta National course and the history and importance of the Masters and he has never been egregiously out-of-step, but nor has he ever fully yielded to what was expected of him around here.
His public apology for his private indiscretions in 2010 didn’t seem to go far enough for former Masters Chairman Billy Payne, who lectured him on failing to meet the expectations of a role model. After he won so astonishingly here in 2019 and was invited to Butler Cabin to weep about his late father and the magnitude of the Masters on TV, he steadfastly kept dry eyes. And more practically, he didn’t blow the whistle on himself when he infamously took a favourable drop after finding the water on 15 back in 2013.
Judging Tiger by his father’s more bombastic statements nowadays may be unfair, but Earl promised big things for his son at Augusta when he first competed here back in 1995, saying he would be not be as overawed or deferential as others.
“The average golfer that goes there is blown away with Magnolia Lane and the history and tradition”, said Earl. That doesn’t impress the black golfer. Black golfers have nothing in common with Bobby Jones, no historical ties with Bobby Jones.” (Nor did Tiger ever became the crusading black athlete some wished he would become: he would say he was too busy competing.)
Woods made the cut on his debut and then missed it in 1996. He woke up this morning knowing he was fighting to ensure that remains his only missed cut at the Masters.
He had seven holes of his second round to finish and began by drawing on the shot-making genius around Augusta that will never leave him, stitching the ball to eight feet from the 12th tee and through the forbidding winds of Amen Corner. He then two-putted for par and limped gingerly away. In more than an echo of 2013, he attacked the pin on 15 and the ball hit the flag flapping in the fierce wind, though this time the ball didn’t roll into the water. A birdie left him inside a cut-line that he then almost missed, bogeying 16 and 17 to finish at three-over. But that cutline accommodated itself to Woods, with his good friend Justin Thomas drifting from plus-two to plus-four to bring him to the right side of the boundary.
It meant Woods made the cut at the Masters for the 23rd-straight time, tying a record held by Fred Couples and Gary Player. But as it turned out, this wasn’t Woods’ battle. It was his war.
Knowing the rains would be unrelenting, the tournament tried to sprint through as much of the third round as they could before the greens were lost to the weather. Hence there were threeballs and a two-tee start, and the organisers showed Woods as much mercy as they could by giving him the latest possible start on the 10th tee.
Such mercy didn’t drop gently from heaven. Instead the rain sluiced heavily down, making treacherous the steep slopes Woods had to navigate on his damaged leg. He missed the green on 10 and then squandered a lovely chip by missing a six-foot for par, and when he hooked his tee shot right from the 14th tee, he leaned his club out to the left and suspended his right leg limply behind him.
He made bogey there and worse was to come. When he returned to 15 he didn’t hit the flag but instead saw the ball skid at the front of the green and careen into the water. He reacted by looking glumly at the patch of grass in front of him.
He took a double bogey and loped slowly to the 16th, the hole on which he gave the Masters arguably its most famous moment. On that day in 2005, the sun shone and Woods’ eyes blazed the colour of his trademark red t-shirt.
Here he stood on the tee box, clad in black and maybe mourning, and chunked the ball a mile left and into the water. He sighed, leaned on his club, and trundled slowly forward to the drop zone, ultimately signing for another double. His walk to the hole looked more of a shuffle than a limp, and his stoop to get the ball from the hole was slow and careful and painful and undignified.
Tiger Woods. Painful to watch. 😬 pic.twitter.com/kMV9WxViQo
— McNeil (@Reflog_18) April 8, 2023
He made the fairway from the 17th tee and then missed the green with his approach, at which point play was suspended beneath the torrents of rain.
The weather will improve tomorrow, but Woods now faces the prospect of walking 29 holes around the sheer slopes of Augusta National with a nine-over beside his name and nothing to play for.
Making Sunday at the Masters has always been a testament to Woods’ extraordinary tenacity, but it is now the upper limit of his ambition.
Woods has never accepted, never surrendered, never declared.
But the patrons whose much-longed for trip to the Masters was ruined by today’s rain will remember the day they were there to see the beginning of the end.