AUGUSTA, Ga. — Tiger Woods has many sorts of smiles.
Some are genuinely welcoming. Some are a cultivated response, a efficiency realized from a long time in the highlight. Some, when he’s about to say one thing barbed, are meant to be caustic. And some are a type of defiance, a reflex when he feels he’s being challenged.
At a information convention on the eve of final yr’s Masters Tournament, reporters had been handled to the final of these appears — a grinning however pugnacious Woods. When requested if he might win that week, roughly a yr after a horrific automobile crash almost value him his proper leg, Woods answered curtly: “I wouldn’t show up to an event unless I think I can win it.”
The smile turned to a smirk.
It is now a yr later. Two days earlier than his twenty fifth Masters, Woods, 47, has realized a brand new sort of smile, that of the dignified growing old champion who’s all too conscious of his restricted bodily capabilities and an ever narrowing window to win a sixteenth main championship. He nonetheless yearns for that victory and has misplaced no battle for the trigger, however a number of occasions on Tuesday Woods sounded as if he was attempting to gracefully acquiesce to a destiny he might have by no means earlier than contemplated.
“The ability and endurance of what my leg will do going forward will never be the same,” he stated. “I can’t prepare and can’t play as many tournaments as I like. But that’s my future, and that’s OK. I’m OK with that.”
Woods admitted that when he now comes to Augusta National, he wonders if it will likely be the final time as a competitor. “I don’t know how many more I have in me,” he stated.
Most telling, after a nine-hole observe spherical Tuesday together with his longtime buddy, Fred Couples, 63, Woods joked that he was not removed from becoming a member of Couples on the 50-and-over PGA Tour Champions circuit, the place rivals journey in golf carts and skip the miles of strolling that ship ache taking pictures up Woods’s proper leg.
With a laughing smile, Woods stated: “I’ve got three more years from where I’ll get the little buggy and be out there with Fred. But until then, no buggy.”
Later in his information convention, whereas addressing a proposed rule which will inhibit how far the ball performed by professionals will fly, he was requested how the new dictum may have an effect on him. The new rule wouldn’t be imposed till 2026.
Woods snickered playfully: “By the time it takes effect, I may be long gone. As I said, I may be in the buggy and off we go.”
Wood repeatedly defined Tuesday that his proper leg, surgically rebuilt in the hours after his high-speed, tumbling automobile wreck outdoors Los Angeles in February 2021, aches much more than it did final yr in competitors, when he typically wanted to use one among his irons like a cane to stroll from shot to shot. At the P.G.A. Championship final May, Woods almost collapsed right into a observe space bunker when he stumbled and misplaced his steadiness. He saved himself by utilizing one among his golf equipment as a assist. But not lengthy afterward, after taking pictures the highest one-round rating of his 22 P.G.A. Championship appearances, Woods withdrew from the occasion.
During his observe spherical on Tuesday, Woods limped noticeably, particularly when ascending Augusta National’s many hills. Walking downhill was no simpler. He slowed as if he was fearful about his leg buckling and winced periodically.
“I can hit a lot of shots but the difficulty for me is going to be the walking,” he conceded. “I wish it could be easier.”
There was just one second Tuesday when Woods confirmed a model of his outdated bravado.
When requested if a few of the favorites at this yr’s Masters, like Woods’s good mates Rory McIlroy and Justin Thomas, nonetheless view him as a risk to win this week, Woods largely demurred. Woods is understood for tutoring McIlroy and Thomas, neither of whom have gained the Masters, in the nuances of the devilish Augusta National structure.
“Well, I don’t know — threat or not — I just think it’s understanding, picking some guys’ brains and figuring out what they need to do to win this tournament,” he stated.
Woods stated he was schooled equally by Couples, Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus.
“That’s what this tournament allows us to do, to pass on knowledge and gain knowledge from the past and apply it,” he stated.
But the unique query lingered. Woods paused.
“Whether I’m a threat to them or not, who knows?” Woods stated with perhaps the slightest impish expression. “People probably didn’t think I was a threat in 2019 either, but it kind of turned out OK.”
In 2019, 11 years after his final main championship victory, Woods gained his fifth Masters title.
It is a reminiscence, together with so many others in Woods’s almost 30 years as a public determine, that has stored sports activities followers flocking to watch him play. It was no completely different late Tuesday morning as Woods, who spent an extended stretch as the world’s most well-known athlete, performed the last gap of his observe spherical.
The ninth inexperienced at Augusta National, on a hilltop in entrance of the sprawling clubhouse, was surrounded by solely a smattering of followers as Woods hit his final tee shot of the day 460 yards away. But immediately, like passengers disembarking from an unlimited caravan of buses, a horde of followers appeared from round a bend in the course and commenced to clamber up the steep hill from the ninth fairway to the placing floor.
Within minutes, the crowd enveloping the inexperienced was a dozen deep. Applause erupted when Woods’s second shot from about 160 yards landed safely about 15 toes from the gap. As Woods walked, or limped, towards the inexperienced, folks pushed towards the ropes restraining the gallery in an effort, it appeared, simply to be nearer to him. Adults held youngsters on their shoulders so they might see above the throng, whereas others stood on their tiptoes.
Once reaching the inexperienced, Woods was cheered however as quickly as he started to observe his placing from varied spots, the congregation fell silent. Woods’s putter making contact together with his golf ball might be heard in the quiet from 75 toes away.
Finally, when completed, Woods doffed his hat and raised it above his head as an ovation erupted throughout him.
He smiled.
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