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In accumulating 82 PGA Tour victories, a number previously reached only by the curiously underappreciated Sam Snead, Tiger Woods won more than a handful routinely.
He was that much superior to everyone he played against, the separation between what he was doing and what they were doing so vast that Woods could come closer than anyone has to winning by merely showing up.
For a time, it wasn’t news when he won. It was news when he didn’t.
Considering all that he did and the relentless way he did it, the appreciation for the way Woods reconstructed the story of the game almost dulled. It was like watching fireworks for 15 minutes and understanding that another five minutes will just be more of the same mesmerizing sparkle and flash.
But that’s not what happened here in what should be the waning glory days of Tiger’s career. Just more than two months from his 44th birthday and two months removed from a fifth surgery on his left knee, Woods used the first official PGA Tour event played in Japan to remind us of his genius.
That’s what it is – genius.
The game has never seen anyone like him and forget the advice to never say never. Golf will never see another like Tiger Woods.
In winning the Zozo Championship across five rain-soaked and mud-spattered days, Woods tied Snead’s record for the most career PGA Tour victories. Their numbers now match but Woods won his 82 against better and deeper fields and at a time when it felt at times as if the whole world was watching him.
As records go, there’s only one bigger and Woods still needs three major championship victories to tie Jack Nicklaus with 18.
That one should be out of reach and it probably is but it wasn’t that long ago the idea that Woods would win three tournaments in 14 months, including the Masters, seemed preposterous. Having gone more than five years since his last victory, Woods seemed destined to fall just short of the two biggest cumulative achievements out there.
For all he had done, there was already a creeping feeling of what might have been had life and injuries not gotten in the way.
Then Woods won the 2018 Tour Championship, ushered to his 80th career victory by a sea of fans who walked with him down the 72nd fairway, carrying him in their hearts if not literally on their shoulders.
When he won the Masters in April, his face showing the joy like we’d never seen it and walking into the hugs of his family, Woods produced what felt like the game’s greatest encore. It was as if he had been called back one more time to remind us of what we had shared and to leave us with the cheers echoing through Augusta National’s pines for ages.
It was the best, most heartfelt and sentimental victory in a career stacked with achievements. If it all ended there on that April afternoon, the feeling and the majesty of the moment would linger like a long sunset.
If we’re truthful, most of us probably thought we’d seen it all from Tiger as he looked and played like a shadow of himself after the Masters. The edge was gone. He looked his age. He revealed he’d been hurt again.
Woods’ greatness has been built on many elements but none are greater than his love of the chase. Whatever mobility he may have lost, whatever clubhead speed he may have sacrificed, Woods has never lost his immeasurable will to win.
During the first few holes of the Japan Skins last Monday, Woods looked like he was there out of obligation, not for competition. When he bogeyed the first three holes in the Zozo Championship, the first thought wasn’t whether he could save the round but how ugly might it get.
Then Tiger started doing Tiger things again.
One 64 turned into two 64s and suddenly history class was in session again. He looked comfortable on the course again, like swinging the club was not a chore like it had been at times this summer.
That is the true radiance in Woods’ golf, the glow that has stretched from the days he played with his pop on a nine-hole course in Southern California to the past week on the outskirts of Tokyo where a golf-loving nation had all its years of waiting rewarded by a piece of Tiger-striped history.
What did Woods show the world in winning the Zozo Championship that it hadn’t seen before?
He won despite starting with three straight bogeys. He won despite playing 29 holes in 10 hours on a soggy course while being chased by national hero Hideki Matsuyama. He won without having played a tournament in the preceding two months and having missed the cut twice and withdrawn once in six starts since the Masters.
Woods did it the hard way, but across two decades of professional excellence he’s never done it the easy way. It’s often looked simple but it has only disguised the hot blast furnace raging inside him.
If you believe in angel numbers, 82 means that a person’s necessities will be taken care of in extraordinary fashion.
What does 83 mean?
An outpouring of blessings is on the way.
Maybe it happens at Torrey Pines in January. Maybe it’s Bay Hill in March. Or maybe one more never happens.
Maybe we’ve seen it all.
That would be the biggest surprise of all.
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