On Thursday (April 7), the first round of the 2016 Masters got underway. The larger-than-life presence of four-time champion Tiger Woods was missing from the fairways of Augusta National once again as he recovers from back surgery. It’s the second time in three years that Woods has missed the tournament where he burst into the pantheon of iconic American athletes 19 years ago.
Back in 1997, Woods won his first of four green jackets by annihilating the Masters record books, shooting a record -18 under par (tied last year by Jordan Spieth).
Woods would go on to win three more Masters tournaments in 2001, 2002, and 2005. Eleven years ago, it was merely a formality that Woods wouldn’t just pass Jack Nicklaus’ record of six green jackets, he would leave it in the dust. And he wouldn’t just break Jack’s record of 18 majors, he would set the bar so high that no golfer could ever dream of touching it in our lifetimes. It was a certainty.
Of course, the only thing certain in life is uncertainty. And Woods’ one-way ticket towards immortality and a place atop the record books was derailed. First by injuries, then by an infidelity scandal, then by injuries yet again, and finally be a shocking decline on the course.
Woods’ last major championship came almost eight years ago in the 2008 US Open, where he won one of the most dramatic tournaments in the history of golf. Somehow, that moment seems to be accelerating into the distant past. And at age 40, it now seems that Woods is further from his 15th major and his fifth green jacket than ever before.
Consider the following:
** This year’s Masters will mark 31 consecutive majors since Woods’ famous victory at Torrey Pines. In the previous 31 majors, Woods won 10 of them — roughly one out of three.
** Woods has as many missed cuts (4) in his last 5 majors than he did in his first 69 majors.
** In his four major championship appearances last season, Woods was a combined +22 over par including an 80-76 missed cut at the US Open, where Woods was cut with just four players beneath him on the leaderboard. In Woods’ record setting 2000 season, he was a combined -63 under par.
** Woods’ last win came in August 2013 at the Bridgestone Invitational in Akron. His last Top 5 finish came in the same month at the Barclays. He has just one Top 10 finish (last year’s Wyndham Championship) in his last 21 events dating back to 2013.
** From 1999 to 2014, Woods spent a record 683 weeks as the No. 1 golfer in the world, including five years straight from 2005 to 2010. Now, Woods is ranked No. 476 in the world, one spot behind Darius Van Driel, whose current claim to fame is winning the Alps Tour Order of Merit. Yes, apparently there’s an Alps Tour. As recently as May 2014, Woods was holding on to his No. 1 ranking. Here’s how it has fallen 475 places since. It looks like the stock market crash of 1929.
If those numbers aren’t enough to put Woods’ incredible fall into perspective, perhaps a visual example will suffice.
This was Tiger Woods when he won his last Masters 11 years ago.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRCjJi_uDp8
Here is a very different chip from Tiger last year during his recent run of form…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Z-tqZY4bEA
And that’s the thing which has been so stunning about Tiger Woods’ fall. It has been a complete and total collapse of everything that made him the transcendent and transformational athlete that he was.
Tiger’s name was said in the same breath as Ali and Jordan. He was a once in a generation, maybe even a once in a lifetime athlete. And nothing from the last eight years can take that away from him. But that is what has also made his disappearance from the major stage all the more unfathomable.
Yes, we all remember everything that came with his cheating scandal and how that rocked him. We all know about the injuries to his knee and his back that have revealed his mortality when we all thought he was superhuman.
But it’s when he’s actually been on the course that has maybe been the biggest shock to the system to anyone who has watched golf over the last two decades. Watching Tiger these past couple years has been like watching Babe Ruth being relegated to hitting weak grounders. Or like seeing Michael Jordan airball his free throws. It just wasn’t supposed to end this way and it certainly wasn’t supposed to end this soon.
Woods is still a young man in his golfing life at 40 years of age. Jack Nicklaus and Ben Hogan both won three majors after they turned 40. Vijay Singh won 22 PGA tournaments after hitting that round number. And while it might be true that it’s very hard to stay successful when you turn 40, if there’s anyone that could have achieved a high level of success at that age, it should have been Tiger.
This isn’t like seeing Willie Mays in a Mets uniform or Joe Namath in a Rams uniform. We knew they were at the end of their careers and not the same athletes as they once were. It’s not like we can pinpoint Woods’ arm strength or speed decreasing. In golf, where the prime of an athlete’s career can see them contend for championships well into their 40s and even beyond, it’s not supposed to go careening off such a steep cliff so quickly. And it’s especially not supposed to happen that way when you were by far the most dominant athlete to ever play your sport.
Even a year ago, we were all asking what would happen in the AT (After Tiger) Era. Would golf be able to survive? Would it be pushed to the margins of the sports world? Well, with the rise of Jordan Spieth, Jason Day, and Rory McIlroy, golf seems to be doing just fine. And now we aren’t so much worrying about what’s going to happen After Tiger as we are currently living in it.
Two years ago when Woods missed The Masters for the first time his absence was as big of a story as who was actually playing. Now? With Spieth leading the field once again and other stories evolving, and the way Woods has played in recent majors, did you even notice that Tiger wasn’t there?
Maybe Woods will come back from his back surgery. Maybe, as he openly speculated, he will never play competitively again. Maybe some day in the future, he will have one last run at a major championship like Nicklaus did 30 years ago at the 1986 Masters.
But even if that does happen, the record chases are long gone. The sheer dominance over his sport is gone. And all that’s left are the memories of what once was when Tiger Woods ruled Augusta and the game of golf.
