Of course Tiger was going to play
AUGUSTA, Ga. — Of course he was going to play.
Tiger Woods hadn’t come to Augusta National just to check out what Hideki Matsuyama was going to serve as the featured dish at the Champions Dinner.
He came to show us he could still could play. Came to show himself he still could play.
“You da man,” is the accurate if ungrammatical shout for Woods. He is and has been since that emphatic, historic Masters victory in 1997, the one that changed competitive golf — the whole tour started lifting weights and working out — and our response.
The Masters had Hogan and Snead, Palmer and Nicklaus. But until Woods and his fist pumps, it never had a golfer who appealed to the masses and especially to ethnic groups.
It wasn’t so much that he changed golf. He changed the way the world approached golf.
It no longer was a genteel pastime where an official in a voice barely above a whisper would remind, “Quiet, please.” It had evolved into a a boisterous confrontation, Giants vs. Dodgers, Packers vs. Cowboys — partisan instead of polite.
Golf purists were horrified, saying in essence, “Look what they’ve done to my game.”
If Woods were on the course, the first question was “How’s Tiger doing?” And that led to learning what everybody else was doing.
ESPN understood. It goes for names as much as it goes for games, and there is no name larger than Tiger’s. It didn’t so much cover an event as it covered Tiger.
An ESPN SportsCenter segment on a tournament, anywhere, anytime, would start with Woods, no matter how poorly he played. It was infuriating. And brilliant.
There is a precedent from another era, Arnold Palmer’s. Writers might tell you Arrnie wasn’t in a tournament rather than who was in.
“Why don’t you mention the other guys, then the fans will know who they are?” a PGA Tour official once told me.
Correct, the fans will know they aren’t Arnold Palmer.
Woods said his start in the Masters on Thursday is, borrowing from the NFL, a “game-time decision.” He’s not worried about hitting the shots. He’s never lost that ability, although at age 46 he doesn’t have the length of the big hitters.
He’s concerned with the condition of the right foot that was surgically reattached after the rollover car accident some 14 months ago. At the time, an LA County sheriff said that Woods was lucky to be alive.
The Masters course, Augusta National, is hilly and long, and Woods, along with every other golfer in the field, must walk every step of the way. Yet, proud and intense, Tiger would not have made what seemed a surprising decision to enter if he were not confident of going the full 18 holes.
“I’ve worked hard,” said Woods, as if he required a reason to compete. “My team has been unbelievable. I’m lucky to have great surgeons and physicians. We’ve worked hard to get to this point, to get this opportunity to walk the grounds and test it out. To see if I can do it.”
He'll do it. Tiger is anything but a quitter, as we were reminded in the 2008 U.S. Open at Torrey Pines when on a leg injured so painfully he grimaced on every swing and won — needing to go an extra 18 holes in a playoff.
Everyone will be watching Tiger. He’s not going to want to disappoint. “My recovery has been good,” he said. “I’m excited.”
He’s certainly not the only one.
“I’ve had to endure pain before,” he said, anticipating his struggle. “This is different, obviously. This is a lot more traumatic. It gets agonizing and teasing. The simple things take hours.”
Success never is simple. It demands all that a person can offer. Woods has won the Masters five times, and so after what he’s gone through, someone asked whether Woods thought he could win again.
“I do,” he said.
Or else he wouldn’t play.