At the age of 30 Woods had won 13 major championships. He was more famous than Madonna. He made more money than Michael Schumacher. And Michael Jordan. And Kobe Bryant. Tom Brady earned $10 million in 2006. Tiger Woods made ten times that.

Yet he’d long had a thing for the special forces because old man Earl had been a combat veteran; a Green Beret in the Vietnam War, and he’d told young Tiger that he foresaw two paths for him: world’s greatest golfer or elite special forces soldier. When Earl died, Tiger had an itch to scratch. He lifted heavy, he ran fast. He sky-dived with the SEALs, he fired their weapons, he practiced close-combat on simulated raids of ‘terrorist nests’.

He didn’t make a great impression with military types, however, according to a brilliant piece of journalism by Wright Thompson in ESPN Magazine. Thompson quotes one SEAL saying Woods “did the fun stuff” – jumped out of planes, fired weapons, played soldier. Drill instructors would roll their eyes when Tiger told recruits if he hadn’t been a golfer he’d have been a Navy SEAL. It’s the hardest military training in the world. Olympic athletes had quit SEAL training. You don’t just become a Navy SEAL because your dad said you would.

One day, after another simulated cos-play session, Tiger took a group of SEALs to lunch. Beers and burgers, Tiger and the guys, hanging out, swapping yarns. It’s since become SEAL legend that when the bill came, Tiger didn’t offer to pay. There followed an uncomfortable silence before a SEAL said to the waitress “separate cheques, please.”

“We are all baffled,” one SEAL told Thompson. “We are sitting there with Tiger f***ing Woods, who probably makes more than all of us combined in a day. He’s shooting our ammo, taking our time. He’s a weird f***ing guy. That’s weird shit. Something’s wrong with you.”

Tiger Woods is always a chance at Augusta National. PHOTO: Getty Images.

There’s nothing wrong with Tiger Woods – well, no more than is wrong than any of us. But he is a different dude, a singular cat. For certain there are few, if any, people like him. It’s illustrative of his self-possession, let’s call it, that he believed that had he wanted to be a Navy SEAL, he would have been a Navy SEAL.

Whether Earl brainwashed the kid with messianic tendencies, or just imbued him with a great deal of confidence, self-love, whatever, it was this belief that took Woods to 15 major championships, including the one in 2019 when he was written off more times than Glenn Lazarus. He’s been written off again, here in 2024, ahead of the 88th edition of the Masters, with Accepted Wisdom being that Father Time is undefeated, and all that.

But whatever else Tiger Woods is, the man is a competitive animal.

“I still love competing, I love playing, I love being a part of the game of golf,” Woods said in February before the Genesis Invitational. “This is the game of a lifetime, and I don’t ever want to stop playing.”

Tiger Woods' written off Genesis SUV that smashed up his right leg in February 2021. PHOTO: Getty Images.

Befitting his odds of 50-1 (and hunt around enough, you’ll get hundreds) the litany of reasons Woods won’t win the Masters is compelling, many would argue definitive. It begins with Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy, works its way down the world rankings list to Adam Scott and Will Zalatoris, and spikes out to the LIV guys – Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka, Jon Rahm, Cam Smith, throw in Patrick Reed, if you must, even Phil Mickelson. There’ll be up to 90 starters at Augusta National on April 7, and there’s maybe 30 who can win.

Counting against the man, too, is the multiple surgeries he’s undergone on knees, and back, quite important fulcrums of a golf swing. The man is held together by prehensile wire and tungsten plates. He’s got more metal in him than a driving iron. If he flew commercial, he’d set off alarms. If Tiger says he’s ‘rusty’ and it’s raining, and so on try the veal.