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.

And this all before the car crash.

On February 23, 2021, in the hills of Palo Verdes, south of Los Angeles, Woods was piloting a Genesis 830 SUV at 135km/h on a downhill section of Hawthorne Road better suited to the speed limit of approximately 70km/h. Heading straight instead of following a curve, the vehicle jumped the curb, flattened a sign that heralded his intended destination, Rolling Rocks Estates, and ploughed into a rocky ravine. And it banged up our Tiger deluxe.

He fractured his tibia and fibula bones, crushed his right foot and ankle, and caused “trauma to the muscle and soft tissue of the leg,” according to an emergency orthopaedic surgeon. Amputation “was on the table”, according to Woods. He spent months in a hospital bed, in a wheelchair, on crutches, rehabbing, hobbling, walking. His latest surgery, late in 2023, fused his right ankle.

While most of us would be happy to limp into our dotage, most of us are not Tiger Woods. And, try as we might, we can’t really empathise with the man’s single-minded focus, his sense of self, his belief in Tiger Woods. Of course, he is happy to be alive and to play golf with his son, Charlie, and daughter, Sam. But he also wants to play and compete and win. In December it was the Hero Challenge. In February it was the Genesis Invitational.

In pain from plantar fasciitis, Tiger withdrew from the 2023 Masters in the third round. PHOTO: Getty Images.

Now, you probably don’t think he can win the Masters at Augusta, and you can make a fine case. But, respectfully, dear reader, so what? Consider Bernhard Langer. In a revealing Q&A on page 62, Langer – who is 66 years old – says “I wouldn’t be playing if I didn’t think I could actually win”. He’s probably no good now – he’s hitting 3-iron into greens that Rory’s flipping wedge into. But

in the context of Augusta and 48-year-old Tiger Woods, Langer’s belief is illustrative. Because if Langer thinks he can win what must Tiger Woods think?

In the 2014 Masters, Langer was 56 when he finished T8, equal with McIlroy and eight shots behind runaway bride Bubba Watson. Langer then made cuts in 2016 (aged 58), 2018 (60), 2019 (61) and 2020 (62). He was the oldest man to make the cut in a Masters until 63-year-old Fred Couples did it last year.

Whatever happens, by the time Woods rolls up Magnolia Lane, if he’s pain-free, mind clear, why wouldn’t he believe he can compete? His belief’s long been a superpower. If he believes he can do something, it’s the same as knowing it. It’s also likely he will do it. Again, why wouldn’t he think that? He has done it. He’s always done it. He’s done everything.

***

Aged 10 he sat down with his father and wrote out a series of goals. And then, across the next 20 years, as if ordained, most all came true. Youngest to win the Masters, youngest World No.1, with Jack Nicklaus in the pantheon as the greatest of all time. Tick, tick, tick.

And then, boom – his back rebelled against that wound-up, rubber-band swing. Then he tooled about, his wife allegedly chased him with a 5-iron and he ran his Cadillac Escalade into a fire hydrant. Later he was pinged for driving under the influence of prescription drugs which begat a shocker of a mug shot. And as all the rest of that tabloid malarkey piled up, Nicklaus’s record of 18 major championships remained like a sprig of rarest edelweiss atop the Matterhorn’s frozen peak. Pristine. Untouchable. Top effort, Tige. But that’s one you aint reelin’ in.

There’s every chance it will remain that way and Woods won’t win four more majors and pass Nicklaus’s record. Time’s running out, and at every major championship there’s 50 world-class buck athletes in the prime of their athletic lives. But one more major before stumps? At Augusta? That’s do-able, you bet. Because if Tiger Woods believes he can win the Masters at Augusta, he can win the freaking Masters at Augusta, okay?

After Langer’s victory in 1985 – in which he celebrated with Australian Masters promoters Frank Williams and David Inglis, who’d made a sizeable profit backing Langer in a Calcutta - Langer says he “became a believer in Jesus Christ.” Whatever works, Broseph.

You know what works for Tiger Woods? Belief in Tiger Woods.

Right: PHOTO: Getty Images.

On the Thursday morning of the Masters of 1991 at Augusta National, the ceremonial tee-off group contained three giants – Gene Sarazen, Byron Nelson and Sam Snead. Unlike today, though, when Gary Player and Jack Nicklaus will hit driver down the first and that’s it, two of the three old boys hit their tee shots and kept on playing. “Dad and Sarazen used to play nine holes,” Jack Snead, who caddied for his father, told Naples Daily News. “I remember one year, Dad was 79, and he shot two under on the front nine.”

Snead did things forever.

When he won the Greensboro Open for the eighth time in 1965 at the age of 52, he became – and he remains – the oldest man to win a PGA Tour title. In 1974, aged 62, he finished T3 in the PGA Championship at Tanglewood Park. At the 1979 U.S Open, aged 67, he became the oldest player to make the cut in a major championship. He still owns the equal-most PGA Tour titles (82).

And you know who would know all that stuff? The other man with 82 titles, Tiger Woods. As a 10-year-old Tiger knew how many majors Snead had won and at what age he won them. He wrote these things down, took it to show-and-tell. The stuff is ingrained in the man. It’s part of his sense of self.

When 43-year-old Woods won the 2019 Masters, it was as unexpected, and as monumental, as 46-year-old Nicklaus winning the 1986 Masters. 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’.

Bear with us.

Of all the golfers through history, Woods 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.

In 1949, following an 18-hole play-off loss to Jimmy Demaret in the Phoenix Open, Hogan was driving home to Texas with his wife Valerie when their car ran head-on into a Greyhound bus. In the instant before the collision Hogan leapt across 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. There were news reports: Ben Hogan is dead.

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”.

More history? In May of 2021, three weeks before his 51st birthday, Phil Mickelson finished six-under and won the PGA Championship at Kiawah Island, oldest major champion ever. Two years later Mickelson shot 65 and finished tied second in the 2023 Masters.

Tom Watson, the grand old man, was 59 when he needed par on 18 to win the 2009 Open Championship at Turnberry. A year earlier our own Greg Norman added to his bulging folder of broken dreams when, at the age of 53, he led the 2008 Open Championship by two shots after three rounds at windy old Royal Birkdale.

Tiger knows all this, too.

As a teenager he was a golf nerd, a student of the game’s history. Little wonder he didn’t have many girlfriends. Consider his opening gambit – Did you know Julian Boros won the 1968 PGA Championship at Pecan Valley aged 48? Did you know Bob Charles and Arnold Palmer came equal second? Wanna get a soda?

Tiger Woods grew up an only child without many friends and spent his formative years spanking golf balls while his dad taught him Jedi mind tricks. So long and so often did Tiger spank golf balls that when he became famous, he went out to a nightclub with Derek Jeter and Michael Jordan, and asked them how to talk to girls.

“Just tell ‘em your Tiger Woods,” Jordan replied like it were obvious. Tiger took the advice on board and introduced himself many, many times and we found that he wasn’t quite able to man-manage the life of the tour tool man. He admitted to sleeping with 120 women. He was rich and famous and good looking. But he was not very well.

He seems a lot better now, though, our Tiger, as he heads towards the big five-oh. He appears reflective and mellow and humble, and you don’t have to know him to see that. The kids are good, the ex-wife doesn’t hate him, he’s not in pain. The Emperor has new (Sun Day Red) clothes. Tiger Woods, it appears, is happy enough with Tiger Woods.

But he’ll want his Hogan Moment.

Tiger prepares at Augusta ahead of a berth at a sixth green jacket. PHOTO: Getty Images.

In April of 2010, five months after his oddly corporate, stage-managed mea culpa following the fire hydrant incident, and all the rest, Tiger Woods turned up at Augusta National for the Masters and said his enforced break was “very similar to what Hogan went through coming off the accident.”

“I just couldn’t play that much and when you can’t play, you have to concentrate on your practice,” Woods said, as, like so many Navy SEALs, golf historians pursed lips and did their best Marge Simpson: hhmmm.

One of those was Jim Dodson, author of books about Ben Hogan, Arnold Palmer, Sam Snead and Byron Nelson. Yet Dodson does believe that Woods’ win in the 2019 Masters, was “that rare moment in sports, where you see that magic that created him.”

“And maybe that was the last we’ll see of that,” he told The Los Angeles Times. “But I’m not so sure. I really think this is a guy whose athleticism and whose passion and the things that got him here will bring him back in a year or two.”

It already has. A nudge over 14 months since his car accident Tiger Woods returned to Augusta to play in the 2022 Masters and finished round one in the top-10 after shooting one-under 71. He followed that with a two-over 74 – which ended up okay considering he’d gone four-over after five holes. He made the cut (+4) by three shots.

He then limped through round three on his way to six-over 78, though hit the ball pretty well tee to green. His worst ever 18-hole score at Augusta came about because of four three-putts and one four-putt. Can you blame the bung leg on that? By the Sunday he was using his clubs like a cane, helping him to walk up hills as he grimaced in pain. He shot another 78. Hogan’s hero would have to wait.

Twelve months later, Augusta was whipped by cold, wet, mongrel rain. It’s a tough-enough up-and-down anyway, Augusta – that year it was like walking in slurry.

“If he didn’t have to walk up these hills and have all of that, I’d say he’d be one of the favourites,” Rory McIlroy said. “I mean, he’s got all of the shots. It’s just that physical limitation of walking 72 holes, especially on a golf course as hilly as this.”

Woods made the cut on the number (+3) before hobbling around on the Saturday like an old boy on Anzac Day. He played seven holes on a rain-affected day three but did not return after a break. By the Sunday, as Mickelson was blazing his way to 65 and T2, Woods had his feet up, nursing debilitating plantar fasciitis. “I don’t play as many tournaments and I don’t practice as much,” Woods said. “I’m limited in what I can do.”

He’s less limited now. He’s fit and has known months of the finest physiotherapy. He’s honed his short game. He can practice plenty, while playing sparsely. His ankle “doesn’t hurt anymore – the bones aren’t rubbing anymore,” he said.

He’s a gym-head. Look at his muscles. He likes working out. He likes looking good. He enjoys ‘gym bro’ culture. He’s disciplined. He understands: put in, get out. He has access to the finest sports science. He has his own chefs preparing protein-rich meals. He has wrist-watch technology monitoring his vitals. He lives in a mansion with a gym and a basketball court and a swimming pool, and he has personal trainers, and access to whatever he needs to make the best Tiger Woods.

Who has more mental strength, belief, spirt, mojo? Who can call on more positive memories? Who else has won the Masters five times? Who else made the cut last year on one leg? Who else, along with Gary Player and Fred Couples, has made the cut at the Masters 23 times in a row? And who would like to own that record on his own? (Hint: Tiger Woods.)

“You never count Tiger out. He can do incredible things,” Rory McIlroy said in 2023. “You watch him on the range and you watch him hit chips and putts, and he’s got all the aspects of the game that you need to succeed around [Augusta]. It’s just the toll it takes on his body to compete over 72 holes.”

Stringing together four consecutive competitive rounds is, of course, The Question, though that’s as true for McIlroy as it is for Jasper Stubbs. And again: old guys have done it before, and in recent times. Mickelson won the PGA Championship aged 50 and shot 65 at Augusta last round last year. Watson was an 8-iron and two putts from winning the Open Championship aged 59. And Tiger Woods has more majors than both those guys combined.

And when he gets that club twirling and sets off down the fairway with that cool, ‘jungle cat’ lope going on, you know the one, that walk, when he’s the coolest cat either side of the ropes, a finely-built and muscular dude striding down the fairway, shoulders back, biceps jacked, a wide receiver, an athlete, ogled by thousands of lumpy middle-aged men in the uniform of the Wednesday comp chopper, and he’s believing it, feeling it … friend, you can’t stop looking at him.

For sure, he’ll have to adjust his swing for his poor, beaten-up old body. But he can do that. What - you think he can’t do that? It’s Tiger Woods, man. He knows his golf swing, knows how all his bits work together.

And he knows Augusta National, a course where knowledge of the grains, the gradients, the swales, the contours, the subtle slopes, the not-subtle slopes, the slopes like skateboard parks, is key. Outside Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player and Augusta National greensman of 51 years, Ike Stokes, what living human being knows the former Indigo plantation’s subtleties better?

Back in 2019, only Tiger Woods truly believed he could win the Masters. Today there’d be roughly the same number of people – especially following his shank and flu-ravaged withdrawal in round two of the Genesis Invitational – who believe he can win the 2024 Masters. But know this, sports fan: if Tiger Woods is playing, then he’s competing. And if he’s competing, he can make the cut. And if he does that he can win. Believe it. 

Tiger Woods after Masters victory number 5. PHOTO: Getty Images.

TIGER’S PATH TO VICTORY

The Masters is a limited field with players invited under rules formulated by the green jackets of Augusta National, which means a line can be drawn through more than half the field. Old boys, amateurs, first timers, they cannot compete with the tournament’s big dogs, at least not for 72 holes. Fairy tales don’t happen in the storied golf tournament at the storied course in Georgia.

Actually, scratch that – they do.

Though it’s taken the two greatest golfers of all time to make them happen. In 1997 Tiger Woods smashed the field as a 21-year-old before summoning every scrap of muscle memory in his 43-year-old frame to carve out a famous win in 2019. Only 46-year-old Jack Nicklaus’s victory in 1986 was as momentous.

And thus, we’ve found so many golfers who almost certainly will not win.

Yes, it’s nice that Augusta National offers life-time exemptions for past champions, but it means you can run a line through Fred Couples, Bernhard Langer, Jose Maria Olazabal, Charl Schwartzel, Vijay Singh, Bubba Watson, Mike Weir, Zach Johnson and Danny Willett.

No amateur has ever won the Masters so forget Christo Lamprecht, Santiago de la Fuente, Neal Shipley, Stewart Hagestad and, prove us wrong, brother, we’d love it, Asia-Pacific Amateur champion Jasper Stubbs.

Three people have won the Masters on debut: Horton Smith in 1934 and Gene Sarazen in the second one a year later. Fuzzy Zoeller (1979) is the only player since, which means we’ll scrub, with some trepidation, Ludvig Åberg, Wyndham Clark, Eric Cole, Nicolai Højgaard, Denny McCarthy, Grayson Murray, Matthieu Pavon, Nick Dunlap, Jake Knapp and Adam Schenk.

We’ll also scrub those heading to Augusta only because they got hot once last year and won a PGA Tour event. Good luck, you’ll need it Chris Kirk, Lee Hodges, Luke List, Erik van Rooyen and much as we like him Camilo Villegas.

Taylor Moore’s in the field because he made the PGA Tour’s season-ending Tour Championship. Good for him. But he won’t win the Masters. And we’ll also strike out, just because we don’t think they’ll win, Russell Henley, Thorbjorn Olesen, Ryo Hisatsune, Sepp Straka, Adam Hadwin, Gary Woodland, JT Poston, Ryan Fox, Kurt Kitayama, Nick Taylor, Rickie Fowler, Lucas Glover, Emiliano Grillo and Corey Conners.

All of which means … Tiger Woods, if he’s to win the 2024 Masters, must shoot a lower four-round score than 36 players: Patrick Reed, Jordan Spieth, Hideki Matsuyama, Adam Scott, Jon Rahm, Phil Mickelson, Min Woo Lee, Scottie Scheffler, Viktor Hovland, Sahith Theegala, Xander Schauffele, Cameron Young, Rory McIlroy, Jason Day, Keegan Bradley, Tony Finau, Joaquin Neimann, Sam Burns, Patrick Cantlay, Tommy Fleetwood, Tyrell Hatton, Justin Rose, Max Homa, Sungjae Im, Si Woo Kim, Matt Fitzpatrick, Cam Davis, Bryson DeChambeau, Brian Harman, Shane Lowry, Collin Morikawa, Cameron Smith, Tom Kim, Brooks Koepka and Tiger’s mate Justin Thomas.