OCTOBER 13 2018 LISTENER 45
Perhaps his injury
torment cancelled
out the scandal in
the public mind.
C
ompelling as it has been,
the third coming of Tiger
Woods mightn’t be the
greatest comeback in golfing
history.
That distinction probably
still belongs to Ben Hogan. In
Texas in February 1949, Hogan
and his wife were in a head-on
collision with a Greyhound bus.
Both survived because Hogan
threw himself in front of his wife:
the steering wheel was driven
through the driver’s seat. How-
ever, Hogan suffered a double
pelvis fracture, among other
things, and was told he might
never walk again. Before the year
was out, he was back on the golf
course. He finished second in his
comeback tournament, won the
1950 US Open and went on to
win another five majors.
Universally acknowledged as
one of the greatest of all time,
Hogan was also a rare lone
wolf in a clubby sport. His icily
taciturn manner – he never
once called Arnold Palmer,
another all-time great,
by his name – has been
attributed to his father’s
suicide by gunshot
when Hogan was nine.
The suggestion that
his father killed himself
in front of Hogan may
be apocryphal; likewise
the story that his anti-
social tendencies were
so pronounced that he
built himself a house
with only one bedroom
to pre-empt the horror
of overnight guests.Six majors
later ...
Ben Hogan
heroically went
on winning after
a crippling crash.
Ben Hogan: sufered a
double pelvic fracture.well-established pattern: the failure
to make a mark in the biennial US
vs Europe competition is a conspicu-
ous blot on an otherwise impeccable
golfing CV.)
In fact, he had top-five finishes at
both the Masters and the US Open in
- In 2012, he won his first tour-
nament for two years and embarked
on a golden run that was almost
as impressive as earlier hot streaks,
although without a major champion-
ship: with eight wins and 17 top-10
finishes in 35 tournaments, he pro-
pelled himself back to the top of the
world rankings, where he remained
until May 2014.
But then he underwent a protracted physical
breakdown and the narrative assumed a Groundhog
Day predictability: injury, surgery, rehab, return a
shadow of former self, repeat.
While the scandal caused an Icarus-like plummet
from grace, 2017 may have felt like rock bottom. In
May, a golf writer tweeted: “Since the start of 2015
... Tiger Woods top 25 finishes: 4. Tiger Woods back
surgeries: 4.” In June, he was arrested for driving
under the influence. A sad-sack police mugshot
flashed around the world fuelling speculation that
he’d become addicted to painkillers.
The perception of personal and professional free
fall was reinforced a month later when the former
No 1 – for 683 weeks, twice as long as the next best- dropped out of the top thousand in the world
golf rankings.
M
any were convinced that was that: the Tiger
who’d burnt so bright had been reduced to
a pinprick of receding light. But last year’s
back surgery, described as the procedure you have
when you’ve tried everything else, did the trick.
Whereas previous comebacks have had the feel
of slow-motion car crashes, the odd promising
cameo amid alarming flame-outs that revealed an
athlete not in control of his body or mind, in 2018
he has been potent, resilient and consistent. If
Justin Rose’s approach shot to the final hole at the
Tour Championship had travelled half a metre less,
Woods might well have also won the FedEx Cup,
the glittering prize for season-long consistency. To
say there was a lot riding on Rose’s shot is quite the
understatement: the FedEx Cup winner pockets
US$10 million, the runner-up US$3 million.
All the indicators – TV audiences, spectator
numbers, the rapturous support, the extraordinary
crowd scenes on the 18th fairway as he strode to
the final green – suggest the “Tiger effect” is as
strong as ever.
Perhaps his
injury torment
in effect can-
celled out the
scandal in the
public mind,
causing disdain
to give way to
sympathy. What
is beyond doubt
is that everyone
who makes
money, directly
or indirectly, out
of the game of
golf is thrilled
that Tiger’s
back. lBack to the future: Tiger
Woods’ 2017 operation
was his last hope.