Four years ago, during a press conference for a golf tournament hosted by the Tiger Woods Foundation, Tiger Woods himself gave a glimpse into what it was like to be an aging once-great player attempting an unlikely comeback in a particularly meddlesome sport. Once upon a time, Woods had been hypersuccessful and sternly imposing, golf’s Eye of Sauron: One does not simply talk to Tiger was his whole vibe. (Even Dan Jenkins, golf’s Gandalf, couldn’t get through; in 2014, Jenkins resorted to writing a satirical made-up Q&A complete with a faux photo shoot that resulted in a sulky Woods response on The Players’ Tribune headlined “Not True, Not Funny.”) By early August 2015, though, a frustrated and frustrating Woods had become someone whose every move was now up for discussion.
“I’ve had people at restaurants say, ‘Hey, all you need to do is just eat a little bit better, and you’ll feel better, and that’ll make you play better,’” said Woods, who was then ranked 262nd in the world following a 2015 campaign later described as a “lost season” that included a missing tooth and several withdrawals. “I’m like, ‘OK, great, I’m having fish and broccoli; how much better does it get than this?’”
In the short term, and more broadly, it was all about to get worse, as a weary Woods grew less focused on being able to win than he was on just being able to walk. Five weeks after that interview, Woods underwent the second of four back surgeries in the span of three years. Almost as ominously, he would be pictured with questionable facial hair a year later in a Fast Company article about his emerging new life as an entrepreneur, a life event that seemed to suggest that retirement must be imminent.
Between golf, back surgery, and building a brand, the amount of unsolicited advice heaped on Woods daily must have been insufferable, enough to make one pine for the oafish simplicity of “You da man!” But when one’s suffering takes place so slowly and publicly, it can start to feel almost relatable, no matter how relative it is. Woods’s fall has been somehow both precipitous and interminable. It is world’s-smallest-violin stuff, and also all his fault, which is all part of why it has been so easy to opine on and so hard to resist. Woods rose to fame as a robotic ideal, and like most automatons, he has been interesting mostly only twice: when he was coldly poised to take over the world, and when he began to completely malfunction.
Woods, who is now 43, managed to make new memories on Sunday even as he harkened back to the past. He won his first Masters 22 years ago, with a red-sweater’d prance through the Augusta azaleas that felt like a giddy daydream of all that must be to come. More unbelievably, he won his fourth and (until Sunday) most recent one 14 years ago, in what now feels like another world altogether, before all those reveals of Waffle House liaisons and all that mixing of painkillers with automobiles and all the high-definition grimaces and perennial false hopes that came to define his career almost as much as his early dominance once had.
But Woods created new meaning on Sunday. For the first time in his career, he came from behind to win a major, and he did so in front of his daughter and son, neither of whom were born last time he won in Augusta. Some of his shots will live on always: that bold, slow lag putt on nine; that glorious tee shot on 16, almost a hole-in-one, a stroke that allowed him to bask and strut just like old times. (Of course, knowing Woods, his just-missed par putt on 18 is what he’ll remember most.)
Following his final round on Sunday, second-place finisher Xander Schauffele, 25, remarked that he felt like he was getting the “full experience” at the Masters by witnessing Tiger Woods in a red mock turtleneck. There was a time when Woods rocked that fugly look in a sort of next-gen, boastful fashion, a signal that he was different compared to everyone else and had the sponsored pecs and biceps to prove it. Back then, tying or eclipsing Jack Nicklaus’s record of 18 major wins seemed like a question of when, not if, a carrying-out of the prophecy that Woods himself had spoken when he was just a boy. This time around, though, the red mock ’neck carried a nostalgic, winking touch: one more sign of the passage of time, the softening of Woods’s demeanor, and the increasingly meta aura that surrounds him at all times.
The past decade or so has spawned a meta-layer of Tigerology that didn’t always exist, both because we previously lived in simpler pre–Weird Internet times and because there wasn’t really that sort of ironic outlet needed: When it came to Woods, he was just cocky and good and there didn’t seem to be that much more there. And yet now here we are. Tiger Woods is not just a golfer, he is an archetype, a projection of oneself and a caricature of himself all at once. He is goatee memes, and he is Nike Golf, and he is the try-hard yin to Phil Mickelson’s majestic yang, and he is every player, from the professional to the absolutely pitiful, whose golf games and/or lives owe something to his in some way, for better or worse.
At the same 2015 press conference where Woods described the downsides of restaurant dining, he commented more generally on these changing conditions of golf life. Back in the ’90s, he said, “We didn’t have a Tiger Tracker where everything is tweeted up there about every shot I hit and where it’s placed. Trust me, I hit some shots and I went through some rounds where it was really bad, but nothing was reported.”
Woods was referring to the Golf Channel employee who for years has been tasked with tweeting and writing about not only every shot Woods hits and where it’s placed, but also more generally about every last thing Tiger says, does, forgets, and implies—and who has, in the process, become a micro golf celebrity of his own. On Sunday, Tiger Tracker was in the media area at the Masters, experiencing an existential career crisis of his own: go out to the no-phones-allowed green and drink it all in, or live up to his promise to readers to always tweet through it?
“Have to admit, that it warms my heart that a good majority of you have said I should bail and just go watch,” he wrote. “So torn. I want too, badly. But this is my job, to be here and do this. Not sure I can leave. I don’t know what to do.” (He decided to stay stalwartly back.) When Woods was photographed in the green jacket, Tiger Tracker changed his Twitter avatar within moments.
As Tiger hugged his children next to the 18th green, it was hard not to recall that first Masters 22 years ago when he was in the same spot hugging his own dad. The relationship between Earl and Tiger Woods had always first and foremost been about golf, and so its intrigue typically revolved around the past, about trying to parse exactly how this man had created such a perfect golf machine.
But if you want to find an audience who cares not at all about your past, have some kids. Woods remarked that to his children, until recently “they only knew that golf caused me a lot of pain.” All he wanted was for them to see him, in some approximation of his prime, in the present. Never mind golf, that’s just the universal parental dream.
Woods leaned into his daddom in the hours following his win, a decision that once would have felt forced and uncharacteristic but that, on the heels of all the back surgeries and in the midst of his 40-somethingness, felt extremely on brand. He gushed to Jim Nantz about how his daughter was able to be there because she had lost in the state soccer tournament the day before. (Parents love talking logistics!) He pointed out that he blew a chance to win in front of his kids at Carnoustie last year and didn’t want to do the same thing again.
And he joked to reporters, as he exited the press conference, that he was excited to bring the green jacket to show-and-tell at school. Which makes sense: After years of listening to unwanted advice, Woods again has something that he wants to share.
