AUGUSTA, Ga. – Golfing Jesus arrived at Amen Corner Tuesday morning, a couple of days late for the resurrection, but no one cared.
When you’ve been left for dead, coming back to life is the real trick. No one is going to sweat the timing.
So with the morning sun rising, the faithful thronged around Tiger Woods, walking as quickly as they dared (no running allowed in this church) across the dew-slicked grass, trimmed tight as a carpet, careful not to take a tumble as they moved en masse to see the four-time Masters champion play in preparation for his first competitive round at Augusta National since 2015.
Forget rolling back the rock for Lazarus, this was the world spinning backwards; time rolling back on itself.
On the par-five 13th Woods slung a low draw around the corner and stuffed a gently fading approach to 15-feet above the flag. He rolled that in for eagle, punctuating it with a mock fist pump.
Hey, it was only Tuesday, he seemed to be saying.
The crowd didn’t care. The roar was of the quality and volume some players never hear, even if it would barely register on the Woods Richter Scale.
On the par-five 15th Woods roped another drive, over the crest of the hill on the 530-yard hole leaving less than 200 yards to the flag. His playing partners – Phil Mickelson, Thomas Pieters and Fred Couples – were 20 or 30 yards behind. Woods waited for them to hit and then lofted a mid-iron to five feet below the hole and rolled that in for his second eagle.
It was deja 2001 all over again.
How long since Woods drove up Magnolia Lane rightfully expecting to win?
Only Woods knows, but the last two years he would try to get his broken body ready to play at the tournament where he placed the foundation piece for his legend – his 12-shot win as a 21-year-old in 1997 – only to concede to his injuries each time.
“In hindsight, it was a big pipe dream,” Woods said about his efforts to play in recent years as injuries seemed to be playing the taps on one of the steepest falls from grace ever seen in sports. “My back was fried. … I was trying, whether it was cortisone shots, epidurals, anything to take the pain away so maybe I might be able to withstand a week. Nothing worked. My disc was gone. So given how I feel now versus then, I mean, it’s just night and day.”
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It’s a comeback, all right. The thumbnail version for those who may have turned their attention elsewhere since Woods won the last of his 14 major championships – the 2008 US Open while playing with a ruptured ACL and a double stress fracture in his right tibia?
The most famous athlete on the planet and arguably the most accomplished of his time or any other suffered a public and personal humiliation when he was discovered to have had a string of sordid affairs while being a married father with two young kids.
It was a gentler time, 2008-09, when behaving like the current U.S. president forced Woods into rehab for sex addiction and cost him a host of corporate sponsors.
Following that was an ongoing battle with injuries – a torn Achilles tendon; more knee problems; neck problems and four back surgeries, the last on April 20, 2017. And one more public shaming – his arrest in May as a groggy, incoherent Woods was found asleep at the wheel of his damaged Mercedes with five different drugs in his system, including opioids for pain and others to help him sleep. Another trip to a treatment centre followed.
The fall seemed complete.
But – as Woods said – “Thank God there’s modern science [to] fix us and put us back together again.”
The last surgery – where a disc was removed from his lower back and two vertebrae were fused together – has seemed to work better than could have possible been envisioned. Most forecasts called for a six-to-12-month recovery; Woods was competing again in nine months.
A favourable prognosis is a return to normal activities with a significant reduction in pain, but not necessarily a return to peak athletic form. Woods is pain-free and famously recorded the fastest clubhead speed – 129.2 miles per hour – on the PGA Tour this season. Where six months ago Woods was still gently rehabbing, limited to hitting 60-yard wedges, he now seems like a golfer reborn, however improbably.
The thousands of patrons who walked every step with Woods on the nine-hole practice round Tuesday could testify. The distances were the same; the shot qualities were the same. Woods has played five times so far in his comeback attempt, making four cuts and finishing in the Top 10 twice.
If he looks incredible from a distance, he looks even better from inside the ropes.
“Tiger is Tiger,” said Couples, 58, who won the Masters in 1992 and once made the cut in 23 straight starts. “He’s hitting it a long way and really, really flush … I’m not a golf teacher but … the sound of the ball [when he hits it] is unreal.”
It’s made for one of the most anticipated Masters in years – perhaps since Woods came here in 2001 trying to complete the ‘Tiger Slam’ and left having become the first golfer to win four straight majors after sweeping the final three in record fashion in his epic summer of 2000; or maybe in 2003 when Woods was trying to become the first golfer to win three straight Masters only to have Mike Weir steal his thunder.
Not only is Woods on form but the list of contenders is long and star-studded. Mickelson, his old rival turned practice-round buddy, is trying to break Jack Nicklaus’s record as the oldest to ever win a Masters. The lefty’s fourth green jacket at age 47 would do the trick. Rory McIlroy, the enigmatic 28-year-old Irishman is coming off a win at the Bay Hill Invitational and seeking to become the sixth golfer to complete the career Grand Slam. World No. 2 Justin Thomas, who won five times last year, including the PGA Championship, has won twice already this season. Two-time Masters winner Jordan Spieth has played well recently as has Justin Rose, who has finished second, 10th and second at Augusta National the past three starts. Two-time Masters champion Bubba Watson has won twice this year already, and we haven’t even mentioned World No. 1 Dustin Johnson.
“Some are saying this is the most anticipated Masters, maybe, ever,” Mickelson was asked on Tuesday. “How do you respond to that?”
“I agree,” said Mickelson.
But Woods moves the needle like no other. Having him as a factor again is a nostalgia play for those who watched him dominate golf for most of 21 years only to fall so far and so fast it seemed he would never recover. Having him in the mix is like history coming alive for some of the game’s young stars.
“I was getting serious into golf … when he was winning about every other tournament he played in,” said Thomas, 24, who has finished T39 and T22 in is two Masters starts. “So, I mean, any kid, that’s pretty fun to watch. You want to be like him. His Masters moments are pretty endless.”
That Woods is here, in the flesh, ripping drives and slamming eagles in a practice round is hard to believe. Honestly.
Even Woods has a hard time with it. It’s not just that he’s navigating his way around the property he knows so well, relying on his wisdom to get him through. He’s hitting it as hard and as far as he ever has.
“It’s crazy, I’ll be honest with you, it is crazy,” Woods said when I asked him how he’s been able to return as powerful and dynamic a player as he was before his surgeries and his off-course issues. “I thought prior to the fusion surgery that that’s pretty much it. I’ll have a nice, comfortable and great life, but I’ll never be able to swing the club like I used to, speed-wise, just, there’s no way …. I wish I could tell you [why], but all of a sudden I have this pop and my body and my speed’s back … I’m hitting [clubhead] speeds that I would hit in my prime.”
In other sports, an athlete registering power numbers at age 42 comparable to what he did in his best years would raise eyebrows and alarm bells – and Woods has been brushed with PED rumours in the past – but so far the faithful only want to believe, and why not?
Woods’ rise, fall and pending redemption tour is less a sports story than a parable in the making.
No one wants to get in the way of that.
“The reason why I say I’m a walking miracle is that I don’t know if – I don’t know anyone who has had lower-back fusion that can swing the club as fast as I can swing it. That’s incredible,” said Woods. “It is a miracle. I went from a person who really had a hard time walking around, sitting down, anything, to now …”
“That is a miracle, isn’t it?”
Amen. Faith is more fun.
