The U.S. Open will likely be performed in Los Angeles this week for the first time in 75 years, and there’s a predominant California theme to the occasion. Many of the high contenders at the match grew up close by. More than a dozen in the discipline have been raised in California or name it residence.
All of which makes it appear nearly flawed, or merciless, that the greatest California golfer in historical past is not going to be competing. Tiger Woods, who grew up in Cypress, Calif., about 30 miles from the website of this 12 months’s nationwide golf championship, is unable to play at the Los Angeles Country Club after ankle surgical procedure in April. It will likely be the ninth main championship Woods has had to skip, or go away prematurely, since the harrowing 2021 automotive crash that almost led to a leg amputation and has considerably inhibited Woods’s means to play, and stroll, a golf course since.
Not surprisingly, even in absentia, Woods’s presence is felt. Especially right here. Especially at the U.S. Open, which Woods has received thrice — normally in dramatic, unforgettable vogue.
Although, as Max Homa, a California native and the world’s seventh-ranked golfer, mentioned as he practiced his chipping on Tuesday morning: “Tiger is so transcendent that you could argue that he’s especially missed at any event anywhere. But yeah, it does feel wrong that he’s not here. That’s fair to say if you look at the history of the game.”
Collin Morikawa, who was born in Los Angeles two months earlier than Woods received his first main championship in 1997 and who has since received the P.G.A. Championship and British Open, mentioned Woods’s affect on golf was so nice that he questioned what number of of right now’s greatest gamers would even be taking part in the sport this week if not for him.
“He’s maybe not the sole reason why we got involved in the game,” Morikawa mentioned of Woods, after which added, “But for me growing up, he’s all I cared about.”
With a smile, Morikawa went on to describe how he had loved getting to know main champions like Rory McIlroy, Jordan Spieth and Justin Thomas in recent times.
“But I didn’t care about them when I was growing up — I really didn’t,” Morikawa mentioned. “People ask me about the history of Rory winning this or certain guys winning that. I didn’t really care. I only cared about Tiger.
“So, yeah, I think he’s always missed. But he’s always going to impact this game in ways that we can’t even describe, in ways that we don’t even know.”
Woods, whose whole of 15 main championship victories is second solely to Jack Nicklaus’s 18 titles, has additionally appeared to save a few of his most memorable performances for when the U.S. Open arrived in his residence state.
In 2000, at Pebble Beach Golf Links, he received by an astounding 15 strokes, which set the occasion document for largest margin of victory. Eight years later at Torrey Pines Golf Course in San Diego, Woods, who had not performed for 2 months due to two stress fractures and a torn anterior cruciate ligament in his left leg, managed to tie for the match lead with Rocco Mediate after 4 grueling rounds.
A playoff the subsequent day put Woods via 19 extra taxing holes earlier than he claimed the championship.
Those have been Woods’s U.S. Open highlights, however he has additionally had six different high 10 finishes. The final decade, nonetheless, has largely mirrored the decline in Woods’s bodily well-being. Now 47, he final performed the U.S. Open in 2020, when he missed the reduce. In the earlier 9 U.S. Opens, he was in the discipline solely 5 instances. He missed the reduce twice, and his greatest consequence was a tie for twenty first.
Since his inspirational victory at the 2019 Masters, Woods has solely accomplished 4 rounds at a serious championship 4 instances. Which brings to thoughts Woods’s plaintive touch upon the eve of this 12 months’s Masters: “I don’t know how many of these I have left.”
In that manner, his absence at this week’s U.S. Open is one other reminder that Woods is being compelled to cede the highlight he has commanded for greater than 25 years.
But these following in his appreciable wake usually are not permitting him be forgotten.
“His presence in the game of golf is always known because he’s impacted this game in ways that some of us could only dream of,” Morikawa mentioned. “For him, it’s just about getting healthy at this point. Who knows when we’re going to see him or not? I don’t think any of us take that for granted anymore.”
Late Tuesday morning, practising with the Los Angeles skyline in the background, Homa was requested if California golfers had a way of satisfaction that Woods was one among them.
“Maybe it goes deeper,” Homa answered. “I find a sense of pride in the fact that the best golfer of all time grew up playing on a very average municipal golf course. So did I.
“I don’t know if it’s a California thing — but I do think that’s just cool.”
Discussion about this post