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.