Just Getting to This Point is One of Tiger Woods' Greatest Comebacks

AUGUSTA, Ga. – You will hear a lot this week about Tiger Woods playing in the Masters after a 14-month layoff, and that would be a heck of a story if it were true. But it isn’t. The layoff is 19 months, not 14. When Woods mangled his leg in a horrific single-car accident in Southern California last February, he was recovering from his fifth microdiscectomy surgery, with no indication of when he might return.

As with most things Tiger Woods, this latest comeback is even bigger than it seems. He carried a caveat into his press conference here Tuesday, saying he plans to play “as of right now,” but fully expects to play. He played nine holes Sunday, nine again Monday, practiced Tuesday morning, and plans on nine again Wednesday. That alone is probably more golf than he thought he would be able to play in one week – and we’re not even counting the 72 he hopes to play in the Masters.

Winning this week would be the greatest achievement of Woods’ career. I say this not to spark debate – he has had so many great achievements – but because thinking of it that way puts his week in context and expectations in check. The comeback that culminated in his 2019 Masters victory was stunning, but when Woods showed up that week, he was much healthier than he is now, and he had been playing championship-level golf for more than a year.

So don’t get caught up in him saying, “I've been in worse situations and played and won tournaments.” That’s just Tiger talking Tiger-ese. Listen to him say “I think that the fact that I was able to get myself here to this point is a success.”

Augusta National did him a solid with tee times so ideal, he might as well have chosen them himself: 10:34 a.m. Thursday, which is late enough that he should avoid the coldest, wettest part of the day, and then 1:41 p.m. Friday, which gives him plenty of time to recover. He will play with rising star Joaquin Niemann, who could win this week and will remember this forever, and star-crossed Louis Oosthuizen, who usually has to wait until Sunday to be No. 2.

All of this gives Tiger a chance, but a chance to do what? Playing through the weekend would be a wild success.

“I have very limited mobility now,” he said. “I've been very excited about how I've recovered each and every day, and that's been the challenge.”

Woods never liked talking about the pain until the pain was all there was to talk about. Then he talked about it a lot – partly because he had become more open with the media, and partly, one imagines, because he wanted people to know that only extreme injuries could knock out Tiger Woods.

Asked how much pain he must endure to play golf, he just said “Yeah, there is. There is each and every day.” He might have misheard the question, but the answer was revealing.

“It gets agonizing and teasing because of simple things that I would normally just go do that would take now a couple hours here and a couple hours there to prep and then wind down,” Woods said.

Woods said in December that he would never play anything close to a full schedule again. Seeing him swing this week, it seems possible. Hearing him talk, it does not: "We've worked hard to get to this point, to get to this opportunity to walk the grounds, test it out, and see if I can do this."

What will the new Tiger look like, and how often will we see him?

If he plays one more event this year, the best guess is that it will be at the British Open, because that’s at St. Andrews, a place steeped in both golf and Tiger history. He won two of his three British titles there. But let’s figure he will at least try to play next month’s PGA at Southern Hills and then the U.S. Open at Brookline, too.

What else is there? Go through the schedule. The four majors are now spread over four months, instead of five; it seems unlikely that he would ever play an event between majors again. The recovery is too hard. That eliminates Jack Nicklaus’s tournament, the Memorial, which he used to play all the time; it’s in early June. Even if he somehow qualified for the season-ending FedEx Cup, it’s hard to imagine him playing three straight weeks.

The Players Championship in March? Riviera in February? Maybe. But we’re probably talking about, at most, seven tournaments in a year. The ramifications of that are stark. How can a Presidents or Ryder Cup captain trust his health enough to use a selection on him, especially with so many matches in a short time frame?

Woods has done so many things we never thought we would see. (A shorthand list that any golf fan will understand: ’97 Augusta; Tiger Slam; cut streak; playoff record; 15 strokes at Pebble; six straight amateurs.) He has conditioned us to expect what seems impossible, and so it’s easy to look at him now, swinging at Tour-level speeds, flashing that otherworldly short game, talking about how he still believes in his hands, and imagine we will see the old Tiger again. But we won’t. He has made that very clear.

“My movement probably will not get much better,” Woods said. “Will I feel better? Yes, I will. I'm going to get stronger, and the whole limb will get stronger. But as far as movement, probably not much more. I'm so limited with the hardware in there.”

It’s never a good sign when an athlete talks about his leg like it’s a construction project. But it is always nice to see Tiger Woods at Augusta National. If this is the beginning of something decent, that would be spectacular.

More 2022 Masters Coverage on Morning Read:

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- What Players Will Wear at 2022 Masters
- Learning to Play the Masters Just Takes Time, As The Players Say Themselves
- 30 Years Later, Fred Couples' Green Jacket Still Resonates
- Golf's (Augusta) National Treasure: 99-Year-Old Jackie Burke
- This Teenager is Masters' Most Improbable Participant
- A Half-Century of Masters Stories From One Family

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