Tiger Woods will attempt his biggest comeback yet when he kicks off the Masters on Thursday
It wasn’t as succinct as Michael Jordan’s one-sentence phrase, but the message tiger wood Taken to the world of golf on Tuesday was the same: He’s back.
Woods has announced that he intends to play in the 86th Masters Tournament starting Thursday, just 14 months after suffering a near-fatal car crash in California. This will be his first competitive championship since he finished 38 here at the Augusta National in November 2020.
What a long and hard way since then. I spent many months lying in a hospital bed unable to get up. A year of rehabilitation and learning to walk again. I wonder if he’ll even be able to play golf, let alone compete with the game’s top players on the PGA Tour.
When Woods kicks off on Thursday, it will be well worth the effort. But, of course, golf’s most ferocious champ doesn’t appear in the tournament to enjoy. He expects to win, and this time is no different.
“I do,” Woods said Tuesday at his press conference when asked if he thought he could win. “I can hit it just fine. I have no qualms about what I can do physically from a golf point of view. Walking now is the hard part. This is not an easy walk to begin with. Now, given the conditions my leg has, it’s getting tougher. And 72 holes long range. It’s going to be a tough challenge, and one I’m facing.”
Can Tiger Woods win the Masters title?
Normally, a 46-year-old with a bad leg and not played in 17 months would not be given much of a chance to compete. However, Woods can never count. He endured four back surgeries to win his fifth green jacket in 2019. He won the US Open in Torrey Pines with a broken leg, the pain on his face every time he swings a club that week.
His game, even after all he’s been through physically, seems to be normal. Fred Coples, who played nine holes for Woods on Monday, said afterwards that Woods hit it beautifully and looked as good as ever. Woods is confident that his body can perform the test it is about to withstand, and if he is confident, there is no limit to what he can achieve.
Woods has returned from long layoffs before. In 2010, he appeared at the Augusta National for his first championship in five months after the personal turmoil that followed the events of Thanksgiving Night. He fired all four rounds below par and finished in a tie for fourth. His victory at Torrey Pines was his first championship in two months.
None of these layoffs have been as long as this. For inspiration, he has to go back even further. In 1949, Ben Hogan was the best player on the planet and came out of a season in which he won ten times, including two major championships. He had already won twice earlier in the year. Then, in the early morning of February 2, Hogan’s car was struck head-on by a Greyhound bus. Some newspapers prematurely announced that he had died.
Hogan survived and appeared at the Los Angeles Open 11 months later, his legs tightly bandaged. He lost in a playoff to Sam Snead and went on to win the US Open five months later, a victory that became known as “Mirion’s Miracle”. Does Woods have a “Master’s Miracle” in it? He certainly thinks so.
Sunday, April 10, marks the 25th anniversary of the start of the Masters Tour, when a 21-year-old took the world of golf with a 12-shot win. It has been described as a “victory for the ages”.
Winning his sixth green jacket and tying Jack Nicklaus most of the time would far outshine 1997 and 2019. He’s staged a great comeback before. This chapter will be the biggest chapter in an already legendary career.
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