Tiger Woods has been a “distant replay” for quite a while now and that’s not really expected to change. He turns 48 this month. To escape being the Distant Replay he now is on these pages, Tiger would have to win his 16th major. His 15th was almost five years ago, before his impressive, battered body came that close to true immortality.
Golfers don’t win majors when they’re that close to being “seniors” in pro golf and there’s little reason Tiger will be an exception. Only two have. Phil Mickelson was a month away from his 51st birthday when he won the PGA in 2021, slipping past Julius Boros, who won the same tournament 33 years earlier at 48. It’s reasonable to assume neither suffered as many physical limitations as Woods, whose well-publicized and punishing lifestyle has compounded the cards everybody is dealt by Father Time.
None of this is new, of course.
What is new, or at least surprising, is that Woods still tries to re-visit his past — the good part, that is. Last weekend, he claimed to be “ecstatic” after finishing 18th in a field of 20 in the Bahamas, mainly because he was able to play 72 holes. Who would have ever thought that?
His 19th-hole escapades aside, his chances of winning more majors than Jack Nicklaus unlikely, Woods impacted the game as perhaps only Arnold Palmer did before him. When he won his first of five Masters, Tiger was 21, the youngest champion ever. Golf superstars were at best scarce, and the sport needed another dominant figure, much like it does now.
Woods won by 12 strokes, unheard of amid the azaleas of Augusta, and within three years he was so dominant people disliked him the way they do when somebody is that good. His career went from top to bottom, as all careers do, but when he was inducted into the Golf Hall of Fame two years ago, he did remember where he came from….pointing out that when he was 14, his parents took out a second mortgage so that he could play on a junior golf tour, with his mother driving him to events.
“Nike was very generous in signing a little punk kid from Stanford of 20 years old to exorbitant contracts,” he said, “and the first thing I was able to do was pay off that mortgage.”
Over the years, three times I walked courses to watch him play. The first was at Palmer’s tournament in Florida in 1998. Woods finished 13th in a tournament he would go on to win eight times. The second was at The Battle of Big Horn, a made-for-TV event that he and Annika Sorenstam teamed up to beat David Duval and Karrie Webb. That match was played under the lights, which was cool in spite of being almost 100 degrees when the playoff ended after midnight in California. And the third time was at the 2010 U.S. Open, at Pebble Beach. By then, he’d won all his majors but the last Masters.
It was riveting to watch him, live, play a game with which everyone else was unfamiliar. It probably still is, even if he is a distant replay.
