AUGUSTA, Ga. — Tiger Woods has many sorts of smiles.
Some are genuinely welcoming. Some are a cultivated response, a efficiency discovered from a long time within the highlight. Some, when he’s about to say one thing barbed, are supposed to be caustic. And a few 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 Match, reporters have been handled to the final of these seems — a grinning however pugnacious Woods. When requested if he may win that week, roughly a yr after a horrific automotive crash almost value him his proper leg, Woods answered curtly: “I wouldn’t present as much as an occasion until I believe I can win it.”
The smile turned to a smirk.
It’s now a yr later. Two days earlier than his twenty fifth Masters, Woods, 47, has discovered a brand new type of smile, that of the dignified getting older 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 struggle for the trigger, however a number of instances 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 flexibility and endurance of what my leg will do going ahead won’t ever be the identical,” he stated. “I can’t put together and may’t play as many tournaments as I like. However that’s my future, and that’s OK. I’m OK with that.”
Woods admitted that when he now involves Augusta Nationwide, he wonders if it will likely be the final time as a competitor. “I don’t know what number of extra I’ve in me,” he stated.
Most telling, after a nine-hole apply 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 trip 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 bought three extra years from the place I’ll get the little buggy and be on the market with Fred. However till 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 brand new dictum would possibly have an effect on him. The brand new rule wouldn’t be imposed till 2026.
Woods snickered playfully: “By the point it takes impact, I could also be lengthy gone. As I stated, I could also be within the buggy and off we go.”
Wooden repeatedly defined Tuesday that his proper leg, surgically rebuilt within the hours after his high-speed, tumbling automotive wreck outdoors Los Angeles in February 2021, aches much more than it did final yr in competitors, when he typically wanted to make use of one in all his irons like a cane to stroll from shot to shot. On the P.G.A. Championship final Could, Woods almost collapsed right into a apply space bunker when he stumbled and misplaced his stability. He saved himself by utilizing one in all his golf equipment as a help. However not lengthy afterward, after taking pictures the best one-round rating of his 22 P.G.A. Championship appearances, Woods withdrew from the occasion.
Throughout his apply spherical on Tuesday, Woods limped noticeably, particularly when ascending Augusta Nationwide’s many hills. Strolling downhill was no simpler. He slowed as if he was anxious about his leg buckling and winced periodically.
“I can hit numerous photographs however the issue for me goes to be the strolling,” he conceded. “I want it might be simpler.”
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 buddies Rory McIlroy and Justin Thomas, nonetheless view him as a risk to win this week, Woods principally demurred. Woods is thought for tutoring McIlroy and Thomas, neither of whom have gained the Masters, within the nuances of the devilish Augusta Nationwide structure.
“Effectively, I don’t know — risk or not — I simply suppose it’s understanding, choosing some guys’ brains and determining what they should do to win this match,” he stated.
Woods stated he was schooled equally by {Couples}, Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus.
“That’s what this match permits us to do, to go on data and achieve data from the previous and apply it,” he stated.
However the authentic query lingered. Woods paused.
“Whether or not I’m a risk to them or not, who is aware of?” Woods stated with possibly the slightest impish expression. “Individuals in all probability didn’t suppose I used to be a risk in 2019 both, but it surely type of turned out OK.”
In 2019, 11 years after his final main championship victory, Woods gained his fifth Masters title.
It’s 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 observe him play. It was no totally different late Tuesday morning as Woods, who spent a protracted stretch because the world’s most well-known athlete, performed the ultimate gap of his apply spherical.
The ninth inexperienced at Augusta Nationwide, 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. However all of the sudden, like passengers disembarking from an unlimited caravan of buses, a horde of followers appeared from round a bend within the course and started to clamber up the steep hill from the ninth fairway to the placing floor.
Inside minutes, the gang enveloping the inexperienced was a dozen deep. Applause erupted when Woods’s second shot from about 160 yards landed safely about 15 ft from the outlet. As Woods walked, or limped, towards the inexperienced, individuals pushed in opposition to the ropes restraining the gallery in an effort, it appeared, simply to be nearer to him. Adults held kids on their shoulders so they might see above the throng, whereas others stood on their tiptoes.
As soon as reaching the inexperienced, Woods was cheered however as quickly as he started to apply his placing from numerous spots, the congregation fell silent. Woods’s putter making contact together with his golf ball might be heard within the quiet from 75 ft away.
Lastly, when completed, Woods doffed his hat and raised it above his head as an ovation erupted throughout him.
He smiled.