They've written him off before and Tiger Woods proved them wrong when he won the Masters in 2019. There followed a terrible car accident and, this week, a seventh surgery on his busted back. But our man Matt Cleary believes he can not only come back, but compete and win again - at Augusta. History says it's possible. And so does Tiger Woods.
It was Mark Twain who said, “History doesn’t repeat. But it does often rhyme.” Echoes of history reverberate every day. As the Smashing Pumpkins would add, the world is a vampire.
When Tiger Woods bolted home in the Masters at Augusta National at the age of 21, people were astounded: surely this is the greatest thing ever done by one so young. Yet there was historical precedent. Frances Ouimet was a 20-year-old amateur - with 10-year-old Eddie Lowery on the bag - when he beat Harry Vardon to win the 1913 U.S Open.
When Tiger recorded his “grand slam” of major championships they had to make up a descriptor for it: “The Tiger Slam”. That’s because Bobby Jones’s “Impregnable Quadrilateral” was taken, having been created in 1930.
When 43-year-old Tiger won the 2019 Masters, it was as unexpected, and as monumental, as 46-year-old Jack Nicklaus winning the 1986 Masters.
However, now that Tiger's undergone his seventh back surgery, there is accepted group think that he's done and done. They he may never play, much less compete, much less win, ever again.
Yet it would not be historically unprecedented if he did play and win again. Indeed there are three men who’ve done it. And Tiger is one of them - he'd had a bunch of surgeries before being written off ahead of that Masters 2019.
Another one is Tom Watson, who needed a par on 18 to win the 2008 Open Championship at Turnberry. Nine months before he'd had a hip replacement. He was 59-years-old. It was historically unprecedented unless you consider that Sam Snead tied for third in the 1974 PGA Championship at the age of 62.
Yet of all the old boys through history, Tiger appears to most empathise with Ben Hogan, the steel-hard loner who dug greatness out of the dirt. Hogan just about invented the driving range. He hit balls for practice. He hit balls before rounds. He hit balls after rounds. Nobody did that.
Tiger would play in the rain when nobody did because it was practice for the Open Championship. Tiger once said his happiest moment in golf was shaping 5-irons, alone, home on the range, as deer and antelope played.
And both men were involved in shocking car accidents. Hogan's was so bad that a news report read: "Ben Hogan is dead".
He was not, though, even if he was really bashed up given he'd crashed into a Greyhound bus. In the instant before the collision, Hogan leapt across his wife Valerie and saved her life when the engine smashed through the dashboard. Valerie was okay while Hogan broke his collarbone, ribs, pelvis and ankle. He bled internally. He suffered many contusions.
He got better, though, and a year later, following long months of sweat and singular, bloody-minded focus – a lap of his bed, a lap of his room, a lap of the garden – Hogan built himself back into a man capable of walking 36 holes while swinging a golf club. When he won the 1950 U.S Open they called it “The Miracle at Merion”.
And you know who knows all that? Tiger Woods. And, it is this writer’s contention, that 2019 was Tiger’s ‘Nicklaus moment’. This writer further believes that another win at Augusta would be Tiger’s ‘Hogan moment’.
Tiger grew up an only child and spent his formative years spanking golf balls while his dad taught him Jedi mind tricks. He was full-on golf history nerd. He knew the ages that Nicklaus won majors.
Today he knows Tiger Woods. He appears content. And mature. And cool. And he knows what's coming. It's not like he hasn't had back surgery before. He checks him into surgery like others take the car in for a service. He could through spine surgery drive-through.
I think – and I reckon Tiger Woods thinks – and one assumes that he’s received the best advice from leading figures in the fields of physiotherapy and orthopaedic surgery – that his body can, following this latest back surgery, there’s a scientific medical word for it … heal.
Consider history Hogan again. Three years after the Miracle at Meriton, Hogan won the U.S Open again. He also won the Open Championship and the Masters.
His record at the Masters following the win in ’53 is 2nd, 2nd, T8, Cut, T14, T30, T6, T32, 38th, T9, T21 and T10 when he was 55-years-old. His parallel record in the U.S Open is similar.
I’m sorry to hear this and I wish him the best for a speedy recovery. https://t.co/5xmTcAVJL7
— Phil Mickelson (@PhilMickelson) October 11, 2025
So, the human body heals. Tiger’s body can heal. He can build strength. He can add flexibility. He can fashion a swing around his fused spine and ankle and whatever else. You think his swing looks bad? You think he’s forgotten how to play? You think he’s no longer a crazed competitive beast?
The man's mad. And if he needs to take a handful of Nurofen to play every day, he'll take a handful of Nurofen every day. And he can work and hone that game. Like the Six Million Dollar Man, Steve Austin, they can rebuild him.
Of course, he won’t ever be what he was at his zenith. There is no precadent for beating Father Time. Yet it is my contention, and it has ever appeared to be Tiger's contention, that he's still got enough sap in him, enough game, enough madness fuelled by hyper-competitive juice, to compete in major golf tournaments. And to win.
And why would you argue? Every dream he ever wrote down manifested into destiny.
And he still has time.
Crazy old Bernhard Langer made cuts at the Masters in his 50s and 60s. He ran T28 at Augusta at the age of 62.
Greg Norman – no stranger to back surgery - was 53 when he led the 2008 Open Championship through 65 holes at Royal Birkdale.
Phil Mickelson won the PGA Championship aged 50. He was T2 at the Masters aged 52.
Tiger is a billionaire who lives on a golf compound with access to the world’s foremost experts in medical science, strength-and-conditioning, rehabilitation and physiotherapy.
He has lunatic competitive spirit and a highly-attuned sense of self, and his place in history.
And this: apart from modelling hoodies, caddying for the kids, and whacking balls at big screens in the SOFI Center in Florida, what else is he going to do? Eat his money?
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