On an April Sunday that some never expected to see and many will never forget, at least one guy was despondent. There's one in every crowd.
"I'm not a Tiger Woods fan and I don't watch 'Game of Thrones,'" this person said on Twitter, "so what should I do?
Just for safety precautions, I'd think twice about jumping on the Tiger Woods bandwagon. That must be reaching capacity after a Sunday at Augusta National that golf's greatest attraction served notice he might be become again its best player.
Locally, I'm told that cheers erupted when someone interrupted a meeting Sunday at Garvan Gardens to announce the news. You think they're doing that for Patrick Reed?
In the last year of what for the most part has been a forgotten decade for him professionally, Tiger Woods won his fifth Masters and 15th major championship. He had not won a major tournament since the 2008 U.S. Open, which he played with stress fractures in his left leg. In the meantime, both the golfer's personal and professional careers went into eclipse.
This was the first major golf tournament since the passing of Dan Jenkins, the Shakespeare of golf writers. Something Jenkins wrote long ago, before it all came crashing down for Woods, came to mind repeatedly during those 11 years between major titles -- that the only thing that could bring him down was an injury or a bad marriage.
Both contributed to Woods' downfall. Not every professional golfer is blessed with a mate for life like Ben Hogan with Valerie, Arnold Palmer with Winnie or Jack Nicklaus with Barbara. Tom Watson, Fred Couples and, yes, John Daly could complete a foursome of major-tournament winners with ex-wives.
Even if Woods' personal life could not pass complete inspection, a lot of people have played golf, or tried to, with physical ailments. Ben Hogan dominated the sport before and after a near-fatal car wreck. Tiger Woods, at 43, is moving heaven and earth again after four back surgeries. The first shots were fired last year when Woods came close in a major or two before taking the yearend Tour Championship.
Woods' fifth Masters title broke a tie for second with Palmer. This was a Masters for the history books like that of 1986, when Nicklaus claimed a record sixth green jacket. One off the lead Thursday, then shooting two rounds in the 60s, Tiger held off the high priests of golf for a one-stroke triumph Sunday that had millions weeping behind the ropes or watching on TV.
"Lazarus," wrote Ewan Murray in The Guardian, "has competition."
For Woods, chasing Jack's career of 18 major titles comes back into play. And with this year's PGA Championship at Bethpage Black and U.S. Open at Pebble Beach, over courses Tiger has won the U.S. Open (by a record 15 strokes at Pebble in 2000), Grand Slam will be heard once more in the golf world.
His hair is shorter and innocence gone since he bestrode the golf world like a colossus, winning the Masters in 2007 at age 21. If you did not see Tiger in his prime, playing a game with which the rest of the world was not familiar (Bobby Jones' line about a young Nicklaus), more's the pity. If he doesn't catch Jack, no harm done. No one else is in the neighborhood.
Just rejoice that we are seeing a new Tiger, one whose true fans kept a light in the window all those years. Only on Tiger perhaps does a green jacket over a red shirt look chic.
The king of golf, playing a game in his 40s that no one can yet fathom, is back on his throne. And to quote the Beatles, you know you should be glad.
Sports on 04/17/2019