The Second Coming of Tiger Woods

Sport, like many other spheres of human activity, places disproportionate emphasis on denouement. The last 30 meters of a dash, the final over/ball of a cricket match, the injury time scramble in football and the back nine on a Sunday at a major — they all exercise a pull few other passages of play can rival. Yet, even though rarely as compelling, the very first act holds a special importance, too. Most cricket purists, for example, wouldn’t like to miss the first ball, even if it is a loosener. Football’s kick-off, which is but an innocuous pass to your teammate, can still send adrenaline rushing through the veins. Golf is no different. Therefore, the first tee, alongside the 18th green, is where you will see the biggest crowds.

But Thursday at the Albany Golf Course near Nassau, Bahamas, is an exception. Hundreds of spectators, journalists and camera persons have their backs firmly to where Watson, or pretty much every other golfer, is. Most of us are pushing against the ropes of the practice green to catch a glimpse of a dour-looking figure in black going through his putting motions. Tiger Woods is sharpening his claws — his short game.

Four hundred and sixty six days have passed since Woods’s last competitive round of golf. That was at Wyndham in August 2015. He has been out of contention for long now, but being out of the game for a year-and-a-quarter is a first. In this time, he has undergone two surgeries on his back and battled dark thoughts. Golf has chugged on, but never quite filling that six-foot-one Woods-shaped hole. Then last month, he announced his return. It’s the most anticipated comeback in sport since, perhaps, F1 driver Michael Schumacher’s in 2010. As was the case with him, there is palpable excitement and overpowering nostalgia about Woods’s second coming, but lurking in the background, too, is trepidation: will he fit right back in? Woods, who turns 41 this month, calls it “Phase Two” of his career. Interestingly, Schumacher was also 41 when he undertook what turned out to be a forgettable second stint.

Woods looks old and weary — his visage, that is; physically, he appears fine. He jokes about it too. “Oh yeah! It (being in the 40s) has hit me. There is no doubt about that. I have some gray stuff turning up here (points to his beard). I am taking stuff from top (head) and putting it down here,” he says.

Age 40 in golf is akin to 35 in cricket. You can still operate closer to the same levels as before, like Sachin Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid did in cricket, or like Jack Nicklaus and Ben Hogan — and recently, Mickelson, Ernie Els and Vijay Singh — managed in golf. However, for the vast majority, it signals the pension plan is about to mature. Woods came excruciatingly close — physically and mentally — to joining the second bracket last year. He is now making what, in all probability, is a final crack at resuscitating his career.

11:30am

After simulating various putting scenarios, Woods wraps up the session and moves to the adjacent driving range. His designated position is between Jordan Spieth and Matt Kuchar. As Woods approaches, the 22-year-old Spieth, one of the sport’s brightest young stars, snaps out of his zone for a second before resuming practice. Woods’s presence, no matter how often you have experienced it, still commands attention. “Tiger is still just turning every head when he walks into the dining area. Or if he’s on the driving range, I mean everybody’s looking up to see him hit some shots,” Spieth says.

Spieth, like Rory McIlroy, has been tipped to be the ‘Next Tiger’, but when Woods is around, there’s only one Tiger on the range. Woods, meanwhile, has his blinders on. He begins gingerly with wedge shots, which he will have to desperately summon later in the tournament; then proceeds to iron play, which will draw a few ecstatic ‘oh ho ho hos’ from spellbound spectators; and finally hits a couple of booming drives — they will be long but less accurate.

11:50 am

The crowd swells around the tee box. Every spot along the ropes and all vantage points on the slopes are taken as Woods follows Patrick Reed onto the first tee.

Reed, 26, belongs to this generation of players who aren’t old enough to have played against Woods when he was at his peak but whom the former World No.1 has impacted immensely. They became hooked to golf having seen Woods destroy the field at Augusta 1997, or at the U.S. Open in 2000 at Pebble Beach. They would have watched him sink THAT Nike swoosh shot on the 16th hole at Augusta 2005 and thought: “I want to be that guy.” Therefore, to play alongside him has been their common dream.

While the version of Woods they have encountered in the flesh is not the best there was, off the course, he has never been better. Reed and Spieth were in Woods’s sub-group in the Ryder Cup 2016 where they “needled and jabbed” their non-playing vice-captain all along.

Spieth recounts some of the banter from their memorable win over Europe two months ago. “Patrick says something back to Tiger, and Tiger says, ‘Don’t worry Patrick, you only need 74 more wins and 14 majors.’ And then I said, ‘Patrick, you can’t talk shit to him because you can’t talk shit to me. You need two more majors and four more wins to get to me,’” Spieth has been quoted as saying by Golf Magazine. (Reed has five wins on PGA Tour and none at the majors.)

This banter and camaraderie is something Woods says he missed when he was away from golf. It’s curious because Woods, when he was in his prime, was someone you would never associate the word ‘camaraderie’ with. He was a loner, with a cold, mean exterior, and he hardly ever mingled with fellow golfers. You got the impression he took his name quite literally. Have age and his prolonged travails — which started on that Thanksgiving day in 2009 when he rammed his car into a fire hydrant in Florida as well as his carefully constructed family man facade — humbled him? Or is it a strategic attempt at image transformation, especially as he may eye the prestigious Ryder Cup captaincy at some point in the future?

Doug Ferguson, the Associated Press’s golf correspondent who has extensively covered Woods, thinks it is a combination of both.

“I don’t think it’s fair to criticise him for being aloof because that’s just the way he is,” says Ferguson. “That’s his natural state. And then everyone knows that through age, you are always gonna soften. And there is partly that meticulous planning too, to be more one of the guys…It was interesting to see on Wednesday that he made it a point to speak individually with all the reporters he has seen over the years. Some of these people he may not necessarily like.”

His fellow golfers have responded to the new Woods with warmth. Team USA wore shirts at the Ryder Cup that read “Make Tiger Great Again”. It cracked Woods up. He says he never imagined he would get such support from the locker room. Of course, it helps that Woods has never intimidated the current crop the way he did the previous generation. But his contemporaries and one-time rivals are no longer nervously looking over their shoulders on Sunday afternoons for the figure in black pants and bright red shirt. He is now more a cuddly stuffed-toy tiger, not unlike that head-cover that adorns his bag. All the same, they all need him, because he brings more ratings and more money. If the spotlight is on Woods, they too get a share of it.

However, right now, there isn’t much of spotlight on Reed as he stands next to Woods in the tee box. It’s as if he is wearing a cloak of invisibility. The 26-year-old stands in a corner quietly chatting with his caddie. The cameras are focused on a set of shiny white teeth. Woods, who has looked intense throughout this morning, is suddenly beaming. It’s because there is a photo-op with Pawan Munjal of Hero MotoCorp, the title sponsor of this tournament hosted by the golfer. After the clicks, the smile vanishes just as miraculously as it had appeared.

11:58 am

The air is thick with anticipation now. It’s hot and humid, though there is a hint of headwind. The seconds are ticking away, slowly. Woods is stretching his remade back. Today is the big test. Not just this comeback, his career depends on how it holds up. He played 18 holes in the Pro-am event on Wednesday, but the main tournament is a different beast. This time around last year, he had had two operations in three months to relieve himself of a nasty nerve compression. Woods and the operation table go back a long way. He had his first surgery — on the left knee — two years before he turned pro. But this was different. In an interview to Lorne Rubenstein for Time Magazine last year, he recalled an incident that had echoes of the scene from The Godfather where Vito Corleone, who is playing with his grandson in the backyard, gets a cardiac arrest.

“I’ll never forget when I really hurt my back and it was close to being done, I was practicing out back at my house,” Woods reminisced. “I hit a flop shot over the bunker, and it just hit the nerve. And I was down. I didn’t bring my cell phone. I was out there practicing and I end up on the ground and I couldn’t call anybody and I couldn’t move. Well, thank God my daughter’s a daddy’s girl and she always wants to hang out. She came out and said, ‘Daddy, what are you doing lying on the ground?’ I said, ‘Sam, thank goodness you’re here. Can you go tell the guys inside to try and get the cart out, to help me back up?’ She says, ‘What’s wrong?’ I said, ‘My back’s not doing very good.’ She says, ‘Again?’ I say, ‘Yes, again, Sam. Can you please go get those guys?’”

In the Bahamas last year, he was asked what he was doing to get fit. Something snapped inside him as Woods replied: “I walk. I walk and I walk some more. Where is the light at the end of the tunnel? I don’t know. I think pretty much everything beyond this will be gravy.”

The rehab was inordinately long, and his future uncertain, but it helped Woods to prioritise. His vulnerability, his mortality as a player and a human being brought dread first, but later a maturity that afforded him a look at the bigger picture. It eventually put him at peace with himself. “It allowed me…basically…(to set up) phase two of my life. I call it phase two because I can’t play this game forever at a competitive, high level. Would I love to? Yes. Guys have played into their 70s and 80s, but they’re not competing at a world-class level. Arnold (Palmer) played, Gary (Player) still plays, but not a full schedule. They’re not playing 20-plus events and they’re not ranked top-10 in the world. But you can still play golf for a lifetime, and I want to play golf for a lifetime, but also I know I can’t compete out here for a lifetime. So setting up my business entities (bringing all his brands together) is going to take a load off my shoulders, so that I’m able to devote more time to my golf while I still can be at this level,” he says.

But his biggest gain during the layoff was the time he got to spend with his kids — Sam, 8, and Charlie, 7. Woods shares custody of the kids with his estranged wife Elin Nordegren. The couple separated in 2010 after Woods’ sexual indiscretions came to light.

“…To be able to spend as much time as I have with Charlie and Sam, taking them to all their sporting events and participating with them, teaching them drills. That part, as a golfer, a professional golfer, we’re not privy to having half our season at home like most sports do. We’re always on the road. So if you’re playing a full schedule, you’re gone quite a bit. It was nice to be home to be able to do those things with my kids. That’s something that I cherished and I will always cherish,” he says, at the pre-tournament presser.

Woods also intends to tell his kids one day why ‘Mommy’ and ‘Daddy’ don’t stay together. “I just want them to understand before they get to Internet age and they log on to something or have their friends tell them something,” he told Time Magazine. “I want it to come from me so that when they come of age, I’ll just tell them the real story. “ That will be a personal closure.

12:00 pm

It’s TIME. The crowd seems to have finally located Patrick Reed. He goes first. Most golfers will prefer to have the first crack when paired alongside Woods. Because, as Henrik Stenson found back in 2005 when he was first paired with Woods, the crowd sheds any pretence of etiquette once the top draw has taken his shot.

“I think I recall telling my caddie at the time, there’s no point trying to get the crowds to stand, I’ll just try and focus and hit my shot because as soon as he either made a putt or hit his tee shot, approach, everyone was just walking. I told my caddie, just leave it, you can’t stop a herd moving forward at that pace,” Stenson recalls.

Reeds bombs the ball down the fairway, takes his cue from the subdued claps and melts away. “Ladies and Gentlemen, please welcome our tournament host and five-time champion Tiger Woods,” the announcer says. The crowd erupts. After 11 starts this morning, the tournament has finally begun for them, and for millions others in the US and the world. Woods unsheathes the driver out of its stuffed-toy tiger head-cover. He places the ball gently on the tee, steps back and visualises. “There will be nerves,” he had said the other day of this moment, “because I care.” He steps forwards, shuffles and takes aim. CLINK! The Tiger Woods story has come full circle.