A recurrence of a foot problem caused Tiger Woods to withdraw from the US Masters, after having made the cut for a 23rd straight time. What is it that keeps him going?
On Sunday, April 9, a ball given by Tiger Woods to a then-nine-year-old boy during the 1997 US Masters sold for $64,000. Julian Nexsen was given the ball after Tiger bogeyed the fifth hole during his final round of 69. He would still win his first major title by the width of the Atlantic Ocean, finishing 12 strokes ahead with a record four-round total of 18 under par.
A full 26 years on, the Masters would not see Tiger in action on the climactic Sunday. His third round on Saturday had lasted just seven holes, and he was already six over for a tournament total of +9 when torrential rain caused play to be called off. Not long after, he announced on social media that a recurrence of plantar fasciitis in his foot had forced him to withdraw from the event that he has won five times.
Watching Tiger struggle with the heavy conditions underfoot, it was tempting to think of lines from a movie made nearly a quarter-century ago. In For Love of the Game (1999), Kevin Costner plays the character of Billy Chapel, a veteran baseball player whose illustrious career is rushing through his mind reel by reel as he tries to pitch the perfect game. “God, I always said I would never bother you about baseball, Lord knows you have bigger things to worry about,” says Chapel. “But if you could make this pain in my shoulder stop for ten minutes, I would really appreciate it.”
In Tiger’s case, it’s almost a miracle that he is still out there on fairway and green. When he rolled his SUV at high speed in February 2021, the emergency responders who reached the scene testified just how lucky he was to be alive. For hours, it was touch and go whether one leg would have to be amputated, and it’s testament to his incredible strength of character that he returned to finish 47th at the Masters in 2022.
It isn’t unreasonable to ask why he carries on. He will be 48 at the end of this year, and his chances of adding to his collection of 15 major wins are next to nil. Why then put yourself through the pain of preparing and playing? Why stroll along as a journeyman after all those years of being the game’s brightest light?
The answer really does lie in the title of that Costner movie. Tiger has nothing to prove to anyone. His peak was quite unlike any other. Jack Nicklaus may have won more majors – 18 to Tiger’s 15 – but what Tiger did in his 20s and early 30s will never be equalled. The on-course records apart, he also took golf mainstream, and made it a truly global phenomenon, much like Michael Jordan had done with basketball.
Consider this. After turning pro at the age of 20 in August 1996, Tiger played in 37 consecutive majors without missing the halfway cut. He won 10 of them. And when he did finally miss the cut at the US Open in 2006, he responded by winning the Open Championship and the PGA Championship back to back. He had won 14 majors before his 33rd birthday. At that stage, it seemed only a matter of when he would go past Nicklaus.
But as the injuries and niggles multiplied and his personal life became an increasingly public soap opera, the most perfectly grooved game the sport had seen slowly unravelled. Between winning the US Open in 2008 and his utterly unexpected Masters triumph in 2019, Tiger had only three top-three finishes at the major tournaments.
For many, that last Masters win, at the age of 43, would have been an appropriate final chapter, the hero walking off into the sunset in a blaze of glory. But here’s the thing. Tiger and other sporting greats don’t do what they love to satisfy our thirst for neat or uncomplicated narratives. When he’s out on the tee, he isn’t thinking of safeguarding his legacy or whatever else the armchair critic might consider important. That’s his sanctuary, his safe space, a place where he feels most whole.
In the last 23 of the 200 Test matches he played across 24 years, Sachin Tendulkar didn’t add to his record tally of 51 hundreds. His average during that period was a little over 32. For some, he was ‘tarnishing’ the legacy. But try telling that to Virat Kohli, Ravichandran Ashwin, Cheteshwar Pujara, Ajinkya Rahane, Umesh Yadav, Mohammed Shami and others who shared a dressing room with him in those final years. Sport isn’t only about runs and wickets, or birdies and chip-ins. There are so many things that cannot be quantified.
Watching peak-Tiger – especially in 2000, when he won the US Open by 15 strokes, and the Open by 8 – was awe-inspiring, but it didn’t really teach you much. Watching the 40-something version with a broken body navigate his way through a major championship is nothing short of inspirational. No matter what your field of expertise, we all have a finite number of years at the very pinnacle, not that many of us will ever get there.
Tiger has been on the downhill slope for over a decade. He knows as well as the rest of us do that the halcyon years are long gone. They aren’t coming again. But to watch him drive 50 yards short of the likes of Brooks Koepka, miss some approaches, and then fluff birdie opportunities he would have sunk without a thought in his heyday is to view life in its fullness.
Tiger, like Tendulkar before him, isn’t bothered about how we view his career trajectory. He’s out there doing what he loves, that thing he has done since he was knee-high to his beloved late father, Earl. And as long as that broken body holds up, he’ll tee off. As Chapel says elsewhere in the movie: “I used to believe, I still do, that if you give something your all, it doesn’t matter if you win or lose. As long as you’ve risked everything, put everything out there.”
No one who watches Tiger these days could accuse him of doing anything other than that. For love of the game.
For love of the game.