Tiger Woods Has Reminded Us Once Again of His Magic (Just Don’t Read Too Much Into It)
Tiger #Tiger
Tiger Woods is the star of the show at Riviera, and, while he can still hit incredible shots, that alone won’t be enough to make him a major contender anytime soon, writes Michael Rosenberg.
He does this to us every time. One round—even one swing—and Tiger Woods convinces us he is the old Tiger again. He can limp away. He can say he’s not the same and he doesn’t know how much time he has left. He can shoot a 78, he can withdraw, he can skip every real competition for eight months … and it doesn’t matter, because whenever Tiger returns, he summons a little magic and makes us believe there is so much more to come.
If all great athletes become prisoners of their past accomplishments, then Tiger is the most extreme example. GOAT arguments aside, nobody ever played golf like he did. He wasn’t just the best at his craft, like Michael Jordan and Tom Brady and Jack Nicklaus were. He was so much better than second best that watching him seemed like a hallucination. Imagine LeBron James in an NBA in which the second-best player was DeMar DeRozan. Woods did things nobody ever even imagined were possible, and then he did more, and so now we watch him pounding 360-yard drives and shooting an opening 69 at Riviera and think: yes, yes, yes, yes, yes …
Usually, toward the end of a legendary career, the athlete is the last one who believes. But our belief in Tiger will outlast his—which is amazing, considering the degree to which he has always believed in himself. We see the limp but don’t feel the pain. We acknowledge the absence but aren’t there every day as he works just to be able to play.
Most incredibly: The people who know the sport best are most likely to believe, because they have the greatest appreciation for what he did before.
And because Woods plays a sport where careers are absurdly long and any of 100 people can be the best in the world for a weekend, anything seems possible.
I understand. I have written many times that we couldn’t compare any other golfer in history to Tiger Woods, so we shouldn’t compare any of his comeback attempts to anybody else’s.
So this is all baked into the Tiger Woods viewing experience, and it’s fun. (Seeing Tiger make a sexist joke by handing a tampon to Justin Thomas after outdriving him—much less fun!) But let’s all try to remember a few things that are easy to forget:
Playing great for one round is a lot easier than playing great for four, no matter who you are.
Winning majors is a lot harder than winning other tournaments.
Every progressive round in a tournament is more physically taxing for a man in Woods’s physical condition. He has had real trouble sustaining his level of play for a full four rounds, especially in difficult conditions. In last year’s Masters, he went 71-74-78-78. At the PGA the next month, he withdrew.
The challenge of golf is not hitting a great shot. Even truly bad weekend golfers have hit great shots. So we should not read too much into Woods hitting a perfect cut or classic stinger, or even a string of them. The challenge is in hitting every shot you need to hit over 72 holes, especially on difficult layouts under major-championship pressure … and this brings us to the biggest point.
When you watch Woods in a tournament, remember: Nobody in the field has worked harder just to be out there, but nobody in the field has practiced less. His body just doesn’t allow him to practice enough any more. Winning 72-hole tournaments requires him to hit shots he has not properly honed—and on days when he doesn’t quite have his swing, he doesn’t have the same foundation that would help him post a number to keep him in contention. It’s going to be a lot harder for him to turn a 76 into a 71 like he used to.
Woods still has the imagination, the hands, the power, the mental toughness—so many of the ingredients that made him the most dominant golfer ever. We can all hope that’s enough. But realistically, it might not be.