Dan Jones: Like a golfing Terminator, rebooted Tiger Woods is back

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Dan Jones4 April 2018

Tiger Woods has been troubled by many things during the past decade, but pangs of crippling modesty have seldom been among them. Even as he has wavered between playing golf like a dog and not playing golf at all, he has kept aglow his pilot light of self-belief.

Few other human beings, athletes or otherwise, can match Woods for perseverance — which is part of the reason why he is back at Augusta this week at the age of 42, more than two decades since he first won the Green Jacket, prowling the course for the first time since 2015.

“A walking miracle,” was Woods’ assessment of himself a few days ago. Yesterday, he expanded on the theme: “I don’t know anyone that’s had a lower back fusion that can swing the club as fast as I can. Some of the guys have said, ‘I need to fuse my back so I can hit it harder!’”

Well. Emulating Woods’s complex medical history — let alone his soap opera personal life — probably isn’t everyone’s path to success. But it works for him. No matter the car crashes, both metaphorical and literal, that have littered his recent years, it has proven impossible to shut Tiger down for good.

Like a golfing Terminator, he just seems to reboot. A new swing. Another new swing. Surgery on his body. Surgery on his game. Most would have given it up long ago and gone home to count their 14 Majors.

But as Woods’s friend Jason Day said yesterday: “A lot of people quickly forgot what he had accomplished... that’s just golf and that’s just life.”

Whether that’s enough to justify his status as favourite this weekend is another thing. Since Woods was at his peak around the turn of the century, it has not often been wise or easy to pick winners in the Majors.

Rory McIlroy and Jordan Spieth have blown Tigerishly hot, but only in bursts. The field seems to get stronger every year. If Tiger does end up with the Green Jacket, it will be one of the greatest revivals that sport has witnessed. At least on a par with Jack Nicklaus winning his 18th Major at Augusta in 1986. Comparable in broader terms with Muhammad Ali in 1974. Or Roger Federer in 2017.

Yet, the Federer story gives us plenty of immediate reasons to believe that a 15th Major for Woods is more than hype and fantasy.

For Woods’s decade in the long rough, consider Federer’s four seasons of apparently irreversible decline after 2012; his body failing him, his appetite for the game seeming to waver, and a generation of younger players carving up what was once his empire. Until, last winter, he rose again.

Hope | Federer's revival gives Tiger a chance at a 15th major
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Plenty of voices in golf have vouched for Tiger’s ability to emulate Nicklaus and Federer this week. Fred Couples practiced with Woods on the front nine on Monday and rated his game as no different than it was 10 years ago. Yesterday, Woods was joking around with Phil Mickelson, a sight many thought as miraculous as Tiger’s newly-fused spine.

Dare we bet on Tiger and Lefty being together again on Sunday afternoon? A reprise of that famous 2005 Green Jacket shot would be a miracle. Bring on tomorrow, oh you gods of golf, and let us see what Augusta has in store.

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