By Ron Green Jr.
If the green jacket in 1997 made history while reaching beyond golf’s traditional boundaries, and if the green jacket in 2001 closed the circle on the greatest 12 months in professional golf history, it was the green jacket in 2019 that found the sweetest spot in a story that has been almost too big to tell.
When Tiger Woods won the 2019 Masters it felt, if not bigger than his previous 14 major championship victories, more satisfying than the rest because of the diamonds-and-rust backstory that has made his career like no other.
He was 43 years old with four back surgeries on his hospital chart, the most recent coming two years before when Woods had needed a nerve block to sit through the 2017 Masters champions dinner before flying overnight to London to see a specialist and undergoing spinal fusion in Texas two weeks later.
Woods had not won a major championship in 11 years, his hair was thinning and he was at that point when he had more yesterdays than tomorrows when it came to glory days.
Not unlike the way Jack Nicklaus paused time to win the 1986 Masters at age 46, Woods found his April magic one more time, winning his fifth Masters as if to demonstrate once more his enduring brilliance.
“You never give up. That’s a given. You always fight. Just giving up’s never in the equation,” Woods said that muggy, damp Sunday afternoon.
For a year, Woods had teased the game with his rediscovered form. Able again to swing freely with a game structured on a lifetime of success, Woods was formidable once more.
He briefly held the lead on the final nine at the 2018 Open Championship at Carnoustie before finishing T6, and he battled Brooks Koepka to the end before settling for second place in the 2018 PGA Championship at Bellerive.
Woods’ victory at the Tour Championship later that year – the one where he was escorted by thousands of fans as they walked together down the final fairway at East Lake Golf Club – was his first in more than five years, foreshadowing what would happen the following April.
“To have the opportunity to come back like this, it is probably one of the biggest wins I’ve ever had for sure because of it.”
Tiger Woods
“I feel like I can win. I’ve proven that I can do it and I put myself there with a chance to win the last two major championships of the year last year,” Woods said in his Wednesday media conference at Augusta.
“I was right there and just needed to have a couple more things to go my way and not throw away a couple shots here and there, which I was able to do at East Lake.”
After 36 holes, Woods was one stroke behind on a crowded leaderboard and by Saturday evening he had put himself in Sunday’s final threesome with Francesco Molinari, who held a two-stroke lead over Woods, and Tony Finau. Koepka sat another shot behind in the group ahead.
It was the first time in a decade Woods had been in the final group off on Sunday at a major.
“That was the plan. Here I am,” Woods said Saturday evening.
With Sunday tee times moved up to avoid the threat of afternoon thunderstorms, Woods stayed close to Molinari’s lead and when the key players arrived at the par-3 12th, Woods began to take control.
Ian Poulter and Koepka, both in contention, double-bogeyed the short hole, committing the cardinal sin of coming up short with the shot over Rae’s Creek. Soon after, Finau and Molinari did the same thing.
Woods ignored the flagstick perched on the left side of the slender green and played a 150-yard 9-iron shot away from the hole, making a routine par, beginning a closing stretch that, until the 18th hole, was an almost perfect example of how to handle the final nine holes at the Masters.
A birdie at the par-5 13th kept Woods even with Molinari and another birdie at 15 gave him the lead when Molinari made his second double bogey in four holes.
At the par-3 16th where so many stories have been written, Woods separated himself with his final birdie from 3 feet, allowing him to bogey the finishing hole and still win his fifth green jacket by a shot over Koepka, Dustin Johnson and Xander Schauffele.
As a brisk breeze began to blow in an approaching storm, the cheers rang like an angels’ choir across Augusta National, calling down the echoes at a place famous for them.
Twenty-two years after walking into his father Earl’s hug behind the 18th green, Woods rushed into a hug with son Charlie, his mother Kultida and his daughter Sam.
“My first 14 wins in majors were always – I had the lead in every one of them, or tied for the lead. To have the opportunity to come back like this, it is probably one of the biggest wins I’ve ever had for sure because of it,” Woods said.
“I just kept saying, I’ve been here, it wasn’t that long ago. Just go ahead and just keep playing your game, keep plodding along and keep doing all the little things correctly.”
And the rest, as they say, is history.
