AUGUSTA, Ga. — Less than 14 months ago, Tiger Woods spent three straight months in bed after a horrific car crash, fearing he might lose his right leg. On Tuesday, he said he felt like he’s going to play in this week’s Masters, and thinks he actually can win the golf tournament.
We must be in a movie. That’s the only way to explain this. Tiger and all of us have stumbled onto a Hollywood set, and we’re all extras in one of the most amazing sports stories ever told. That’s what this has to be. How else do we explain this craziness, this magic, this drama?
Those first 25 years of breathtaking victories and high-profile injuries and massive personal scandals and amazing comebacks? Winning the U.S. Open on a broken leg in 2008? Winning the Masters at 43 after a laundry list of injuries and surgeries in 2019?
All just a prelude to one of the more remarkable sports dramas ever, playing out in real time this week in front of us all on the lush emerald hills and valleys of Augusta National Golf Club.
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Unless he has a setback between now and 10:34 a.m. ET Thursday, when he is scheduled to tee off in the first round, Woods will be on his way in the 2022 Masters. No one, not even Tiger himself, thought that was possible when he wrecked his SUV on February 23, 2021, in Southern California, shattering his right leg.
“At that time I was still in a hospital bed, and I was out for the next three months. I never left that hospital bed. So that was a tough road. To finally get out of that where I wasn’t in a wheelchair or crutches and walking and still had more surgeries ahead of me, to say that I was going to be here playing and talking to you guys again, it would have been very unlikely.”
Justin Thomas (from left), Tiger Woods, and Fred Couples walk off the no. 8 tee box during a practice round of The Masters golf tournament at Augusta National Golf Club. (Photo: Rob Schumacher-USA TODAY Sports)
Who didn’t feel that way? The hope was that he would be able to walk again, someday. Golf? Come on. That sounded ridiculous then.
“I think after the accident, based on the information I’d heard, I would have just been happy to hear that he could walk with Charlie during (his son’s) rounds at any point in time,” Jordan Spieth, the 2015 Masters champion, said Tuesday. “I never even really thought about him playing golf again after everything he’s been through, injuries over the years and such.”
Speaking for almost everyone, Spieth said, “He already had his comeback in 2019, but I mean, how many comebacks has he had? When I first heard he was — I don’t remember when it was — late last year into the new year maybe, that he could swing a club, you know, whenever he posted, I was very surprised and amazed at the ability to do that.”
So now here we are in April, and Woods is most definitely back. Although he hasn’t played a competitive round of golf since the November 2020 Masters, he said, so confidently and Tiger-esque, that he is not worried about the golf per se.
“I can hit it just fine,” he said in his standing-room-only press conference at Augusta National. “I don’t have any qualms about what I can do physically from a golf standpoint.”
It’s the walking that is the problem. Can he get up and down the vaunted hills of Augusta over 36 holes, much less the full 72?
“Walking is the hard part,” he said. “This is normally not an easy walk to begin with. Now given the conditions that my leg is in, it gets even more difficult. You know, 72 holes is a long road, and it’s going to be a tough challenge, and a challenge that I’m up for.”
We shall see. Logic tells us that if he in fact plays on Thursday, victory would be in simply making the cut, not in actually winning the tournament. Of course Tiger said he thinks he can win. He says that before every tournament. It’s how he thinks. It’s who he is, especially at Augusta National, where he has won five times.
But if we’ve learned anything over the years about Tiger Woods, it’s that you never doubt him, never count him out. If we have truly stumbled into some kind of fantastic sports dream, who knows where he, and all of us, are headed.
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