A few months after the 2009 car crash that began the unravelling of his career for most of the next decade, Tiger Woods returned to golf.
He wasn’t much good, but he was different.
“At [previous] tournaments, he would look at you and burn a hole right through you, like you didn’t even exist,” touring pro Jason Gore – a man who’d known Woods since they were grade-schoolers – told Sports Illustrated years later. “He started asking about my wife, asking about my kids. It was nice to see him be, you know, normal.”
The most famous stop on Woods’s unlikely comeback tour happened eight months ago in Augusta, Ga., when he won the Masters. But his transformation from an alien robot sent here to destroy golf courses into a recognizably human person found its fullest expression in Australia over the weekend.
Woods arrived at the Presidents Cup – a tournament that mixes the best parts of a golf major, a football pep rally and a WWE tag-team match circa 1984 – as the rookie captain of the U.S. team.
Tiger Woods holds the Presidents Cup after the U.S. defeated the International team in Melbourne, Australia, on Sunday.SIMON BAKER/AFP/Getty Images
Presidents Cup captains are traditionally over-the-hill figureheads – much like actual presidents. They are there to add gravitas to the event and, one assumes, say things like, “Try to hit the ball toward the hole.”
Using his discretionary roster picks, Woods tapped himself for the team. That often ends in tears, but it is what you’d expect from a guy who has never lacked for confidence. And he was right. He’d been the best American in the early going.
Then he did something surprising.
In the penultimate round, with the America side trailing the Rest-of-the-World team badly, Woods benched himself.
“We gotta do what’s best for the team,” Woods not-really explained.
Despite all the public speaking he’s done in his life, Woods has never developed the knack for it. He channels all his thoughts through a motivational cliché machine.
Once the cameras were on, Woods had never once taken the risk of saying or doing anything that might be held against him. It’s one of the reasons that while many people admired or envied him, no one ever loved him.
This was a little different. Woods was opening himself up to a bunch of bad possibilities – Tiger the ditherer, Tiger the quitter, Tiger the fraidy-cat.
And then it worked out. The Americans reeled the Internationals in on Saturday and – with Woods back on the course – finished them off Sunday. If not a fightback for the ages, it was still a notable one.
As he hit his winning stroke against Mexico’s Abraham Ancer, Woods had his hat off and was extending his hand before the ball was in the cup. No hooting. No fist pumps. No celebrations.
Afterward, he walked over to a group of American fans for photos. He looked … happy?
This is no longer the guy we once knew.
What was most remarkable was the way in which Woods’s team talked about the victory after the fact. They hadn’t won with him. They’d won for him.
“It was pretty awesome to play for the greatest player ever,” Matt Kuchar said.
“We are very inspired to play for Tiger, with Tiger, and it’s so satisfying to win this Cup because of that,” Tony Finau said.
Okay, so golfers aren’t poets. But the point is that – among his peers, at least – Woods has finally ascended to something approaching Arnold Palmer status. He isn’t just demonstrably great at golf any more. He now exists in a realm above the game. He’s becoming an icon.
The tricky thing about icons is that, in order to be one, you must be liked.
Athletes who are remote and make no human connections may also be considered great, but they are forgotten after a generation or so.
You don’t linger in the imagination because you won X number of tournaments or trophies. Lots of people win things. Your longevity is born of stories – the time you did this or said that or touched someone’s life in a small, but telling way. The simpler these stories are, the more they stick in the public mind.
When you think of Palmer these days, it has very little to do with his titles. A vast majority of people have never seen those wins. They may not even have seen him hit a stroke in his prime.
Palmer remains a titan because people tell stories about how lovely he was to be around. He apparently had that special skill of really seeing people, rather than looking through them.
He wasn’t likeable because he was great. He was likeable in spite of it.
You can’t tell that story yourself. You can’t pay a PR firm or the marketing guys at Nike to manufacture it for you. Others have to volunteer for the duty.
Woods will be 44 in a few days – long past the age most athletes get to play. And people have finally started to tell those stories.
One gets the feeling that the key to that wasn’t his play. It was his lack thereof. In taking his own name off the list, Woods did something he hasn’t often been accused of – showing humility. That it worked out only added to the meaningfulness of the gesture.
All the talk now is of what Woods will look like in 2020. He’s still old and creaky. He didn’t manage much this year after the Masters. But he’s just had a nice, little run of form.
Will he return next year as resurgent as he looked back in April? He needs three more majors to tie Jack Nicklaus for the most in history. Is that possible?
I’m not sure it matters as much any more.
Palmer only won seven majors. Name a golfer who matters more.
If Woods’s goal now is immortality, his new target may be bagging fewer wins and being more normal.