The Sunday Times - UK (2022-04-10)

16 April 10, 2022The Sunday Times 2GS

Golf The Masters

THIS IS TIGER’S

GREATEST FEAT

‘The refusal

to give up is

his greatest

and most

admirable

quality’

T

wenty-five years have passed

since Tiger Woods won the

Green Jacket for the first

time. He was 21 then, playing

his third Masters and his first

as a professional. This was

1997, Jack Nicklaus tied 39th

that year and Woods didn’t

just beat the opposition, he ground

them to dust. Tom Kite was run-

ner-up, the leader in the ranks of the

annihilated. Twelve shots was Kite’s

margin of defeat.

Woods was then and remains the

youngest ever winner of the Masters.

His 18-under par was a tournament

record. Golf had never had a cham-

pion remotely like him and though

the sport needed Tiger Woods, it

wasn’t ready for him. He was both

loved and disliked, fêted and decried.

His late father Earl nurtured him and

then unleashed him on the world.

“We came. We saw. We conquered.

We got the f*** out of town,” was how

Earl described their triumphant

march through junior golf. Tiger was

then the boy soldier; quick to learn,

eager to please. To the adult game he

brought the same merciless streak,

still primed to win but while crushing

his opponents, he suppressed parts of

himself. In time that would hurt him.

Woods wasn’t then the man he

would become. His contemporaries

admired him more than they loved

him. Let us acknowledge that what

turned some people away from him,

turned him on. Or, as the golf writer

Michael Bamberger once put it,

“Whatever character defects he might

have had, they were useful on Sunday

afternoons.”

Pro golfers last longer than athletes

in other sports. No sprinter or footbal-

ler or rugby player or F1 driver is going

to beat the best in their sports at age

43, which Woods did when winning

the 2019 Masters. And because they

endure so long, there is time for evolu-

tion in how we, the public, feel about

them. This has been especially so in

the case of Woods.

As we have come to better under-

stand him, the boy soldier has grown

into a more mature and empathetic

man.

As we have come

to understand

him, boy soldier

has grown into a

more mature and

empathetic man

DAVID

WA LS H

Chief Sports Writer Augusta

In yesterday’s third round, the limp

was more discernible than earlier in

the week but that was to be expected.

A cold breeze gave the day a winter-

like feel and he’d warned us that his

rebuilt right leg hates the cold. He is

still recovering from that car crash;

the broken bones and the trauma

inflicted on his already fused spine.

Though he was nine shots back on

runaway leader Scottie Scheffler,

Woods would have believed he had a

chance.

The irony was that he struck the

ball better than he had in the opening

two rounds. What he couldn’t do was

what he once did better than any

As Scheffler, below,

moved ahead, Woods

endeared himself with

a show of fortitude to

make the cut

ERIK S. LESSER/EPA