Tiger Woods Is Not Fully Healthy, But This Week He Reminded Us He's Still Worth Admiring
ST. ANDREWS, Scotland – Tiger Woods has never looked worse; Tiger Woods has never looked better. Watch him now, with the jerky follow-through of a less athletic man, carrying his driver down an ancient fairway in case he needs a crutch. He will play the British Open this week looking nothing like the greatest golfer ever, and that’s why he is.
This is what fulfills him. Over the last year, as other top pros angled for millions, Woods was chasing ghosts. He was laid up at home, lucky he didn’t lose his right leg, and when his buddy Justin Thomas would visit, he told him: St. Andrews. The 150th Open. We all need a reason to get out of bed in the morning, and that was Tiger’s.
Thomas says even before Woods could play any golf, he spoke of this Open "quite often. He reminded me many times that he planned on beating me here at this tournament.” The trash talk is just their language. What Woods really meant was that he planned to be here. The public wondered if Woods would play the Masters, and he did. But Thomas said, “I know that if you could have told him at the beginning of the year, ‘You (have) one event to play and one event only,’ … it would have been here.”
Woods said, “it's hard to believe it's been 150 years we've played this tournament,” as though he was a part of all 150 – because in his mind, he was. They are all linked. What drew him back here, what got him through the grueling rehab and every painful step, was not the money or the cheers or the possibility of raising the Claret Jug again, but the chance to be part of the game. He has always cherished it.
Golf needs that now. It needs Tiger Woods to show the way, and that is exactly what he is doing. Last week he played with Rory McIlroy at Ballybunion, a treasure of a course on Ireland’s western coast. Then he came to St. Andrews and practiced with Thomas, whom he says is “like my little brother.” Among elite golfers, McIlroy and Thomas are probably the two most prominent supporters of the PGA Tour. This is not a coincidence.
Woods used to be the game’s most dominant player. Now he is its soul. Earlier than he ever imagined, for reasons he never anticipated, Woods has become an elder statesman for his sport. He reminds people what matters and chastises those who forget. Of those who left the PGA Tour for the Saudi-government funded LIV Golf, he said Tuesday, “I disagree with it. I think that what they've done is they've turned their back on what has allowed them to get to this position.”
Think of how much work Woods had to do just to be here, and then listen to him: “This does feel like it's the biggest Open Championship we've ever had.” That’s not because of the purse. It’s because it’s the 150th Open, a big round number, and because it’s at St. Andrews, where the past is always present.
Old Tom Morris and Young Tom Morris are buried at the cathedral in town. At his press conference here Monday, Jack Nicklaus spent considerably more time gushing about his first Open he played at St. Andrews in 1964 (“I fell in love with it immediately”) than the two Opens he actually won here.
Jack understands that champions should also be caretakers. So does Tiger. Of those who defected to LIV Golf, with its guaranteed millions and shotgun starts and 54-hole events for limited fields, he says, “I don’t understand it.” They have made their bed but forgotten their reason to get out of it.
“I think those traditions and the history of the game are very important to him,” McIlroy said. “And I think he doesn't want to see that all go away. I think that's a big part of the reason why his (LIV) position is what it is.”
Woods has looked almost giddy on the Old Course this week. He came here to win, sure, but mostly to try to win. When Nicklaus was on the back nine of his career, he said he wouldn’t miss playing in the Masters as much as he would miss preparing for it. Woods talked this week about having to “earn it in the dirt.” To Tiger, the work is not just a means to an end. It is its own reward. If you don’t get that, he doesn’t get you.
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Not a Goodbye, Yet
Twenty-two years ago this month at St. Andrews, Woods won the Claret Jug for the first time. In an interview moments later, he called it "my first British Open – sorry, Open win,” a quickly forgotten comment that captured Tiger in important ways. For one: Saying “my first” meant he assumed he would win more, which would have been hubris from anybody else but not from Tiger. Everybody assumed he would win more, and he did. And also: He caught himself calling the Open the “British,” which is what Americans say but Britons do not, and he auto-corrected himself.
He always wanted to dominate the game but never wanted to be bigger than it. As a young prodigy, Woods declined invitations to play Augusta National until he earned a spot in the Masters. When he did play there, as a 19-year-old in 1995, he called it “the greatest experience of my life” and thanked the members in a letter, saying, “It was fantasyland and Disney World wrapped into one.”
Two years later, he blew away the Masters field. He was a dark-skinned man dominating a traditionally exclusionary sport, and even some of the people who applauded his achievement did not show the empathy he deserved. He kept saying he was multiracial and people kept telling him he was entirely Black. When he mentioned golf’s racist history, he was accused of “playing the race card.” He and then-wife Elin named their son after Charlie Sifford, the trailblazing Black golfer, but when Tiger chose not to attend a celebration of Jackie Robinson at a baseball game, he was accused of not caring enough about race. When he was caught committing adultery, he was scolded in ways that white adulterers Arnold Palmer and Nick Faldo never were (and never should have been).
The world of golf has never really owned the racial double-standard it applied to Woods. Surely it contributed to his testy relationship with the media, even before the tabloids got a hold of him. He could be distant and intentionally unhelpful back then, cracking the same jokes after practice rounds (“I broke 80, so that was good”) and bristling when anybody dared ask him about a swing change, or even who was coaching him.
But there was never any question about his reverence for the game. It is why he triumphed, why he won a U.S. Open on one leg, why he kept re-tooling his swing when he was the best player in the world, and eventually why he came back … and came back … and came back. Racist history be damned: He refused to let golf make him feel unwelcome. He loved it too much.
Golf adores its grand old champions, and all golf fans really ask is that the old champions adore the game, too. It is a small request. You can wear 17 logos on your shirt, endorse whichever politician you prefer, shill for every product imaginable, let your weight and scores balloon, and people will stand and applaud. Sports fans sometimes bemoan the sight of Willie Mays with the Mets or Michael Jordan with the Wizards; there are plenty of tennis fans who want Roger Federer to retire rather than look ordinary at Wimbledon. Golf is different. Fans love a long goodbye, and no place does goodbyes like St. Andrews.
Arnold Palmer declared the 1990 Open at St. Andrews his “swan song,” then came back and played in the Open again five years later because it was at St. Andrews. As Palmer hit the first tee shot of his final Open round in ’95, Woods watched him; he was on his way to the range. That same year, Nicklaus hinted he had played his last Open. Then, in 2000, Nicklaus came back to St. Andrews again and said that was really it. Then he came back to St. Andrews again in 2005 for what actually was his last Open; Woods remembers being “four or five holes” behind Nicklaus during Jack’s last round.
This week is not a goodbye for Woods. But he can hear the goodbyes from here. As he said Tuesday, “I don't know how many Open Championships I have left here at St. Andrews.” McIlroy says, “I think he maybe appreciates it all just a bit more now, and that's part of the reason that you're seeing that sort of lightness and more joyful person on the golf course, I guess.”
The Antithesis To the Startup League
So many of the pros who sold out to the Saudi government talk about “controlling their schedule” so they don’t have to play too often. It’s nonsense on a lot of levels. Phil Mickelson, for example, had lifetime membership on the PGA Tour, and therefore could have played as many or as few PGA Tour events as he wanted. But put that aside.
If any pro golfer in the world needs to limit his schedule right now, it is Woods. It takes him weeks to recover from a tournament. And what has he done? He has poured every ounce of energy into playing the majors. We are so accustomed to this from him that we take it for granted. But imagine if he had Mickelson’s priorities.
Phil won’t admit this, but he is finished as a contending golfer; he wants to cash in on his name, and possibly make up for millions he lost gambling. Tiger could have taken the money – at least a quarter-billion, maybe twice that – and say his injuries keep him from playing a full schedule anyway, and so he decided to be an ambassador to LIV Golf to “grow the game.” But it’s impossible to imagine him doing that, because then he wouldn’t be Tiger Woods. He would be Greg Norman, bizarrely aggrieved by the game instead of eternally grateful for it.
The Royal & Ancient Golf Club, which runs the Open, did not invite Norman, the LIV Chairman to any of its festivities this week. Woods, who used to avoid hot topics like they were pot bunkers, endorsed the decision: “Greg has done some things that I don't think is in the best interest of our game, and we're coming back to probably the most historic and traditional place in our sport. I believe it's the right thing.”
The professional game has evolved over the years. The PGA Tour was not founded until 1968. American stars did not always travel to the Open. But the driving force behind most major changes has been to create the best competition in the world. LIV Golf is designed to benefit a few at the expense of many. It is antithetical to everything Woods values about the sport.
Woods spoke at length Tuesday about his love for golf history, and it was both extremely welcome and entirely unnecessary. His actions over his whole life have proven it. All the money he made never quenched his thirst. All the money he could make now apparently didn’t tempt him.
The question of whether Woods can win this week should be absurd. He has played seven competitive rounds in the last 20 months. He said Tuesday he even has to be careful walking over the Swilcan Bridge: “I almost ate it today.” Sure, Thomas says Tiger can win, but what else is Thomas going to say?
There is no reason to expect Tiger to contend except that he is Tiger, and the memories of him performing so many seemingly impossible feats are so vivid. Watch him now, with his awkward gait and relentless spirit. Look closely at Old Tiger Woods and you will see Young Tiger Woods, and that is his gift to us. At St. Andrews, and for the game’s most extraordinary player, the past is always present.
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