How far can the best player of the last three decades go now that, with his triumph at the Masters, he has shown -without physical limitations- that he is once again in control of his extraordinary talent? His fifteenth major, which came eleven years after his previous major (2008 US Open), has shown that, at 43 years of age, he is still in control of his extraordinary talent,
Tiger Woods can still give a lot of fight.
If in December 2017 he was ranked 1,199th in the world ranking and nine months later he was thirteenth – after his triumph in The Tour Championship after he had been sixth in the British Open and second in the US PGA Championship – the Californian was perched at the end of last April at the sixth position in the planetary ranking.
Tiger’s turnaround is remarkable, especially after the Cypress star and Jupiter Island, Florida resident underwent back surgery four times and could barely walk just over a year ago.
Those times are long gone, 27 years ago, when a very young Tiger jumped into the world golf limelight with his debut on the PGA Tour. It was February 2, 1992, when a slender 16-year-old stripling showed up at the Nissan Open in Los Angeles and signed his first round of 72 strokes in the best professional circuit in the world.
Amateur Tiger became the youngest player to play in a PGA Tour tournament. On the second day he shot 75, not enough to make the cut at Riviera Country Club, in a tournament won by Davis Love III.
The Tiger Woods of the time, a lanky lad weighing just 63 kilos, some 20 kilos less than today, had to ask the tournament’s chief steward for permission to play his first round.
“It was a life-changing moment,” he recalled 25 years later at a not exactly sweet time in his career, in which he has amassed 81 PGA Tour titles, including 15 majors, second only to Jack Nicklaus, who amassed 18. If his second places in PGA Tour tournaments were converted into victories, Tiger would have already surpassed the hundred mark, as he has been runner-up 31 times. He also has a score of victories in other circuits.
“It was a great learning experience for me,” acknowledged the former world number one. “I realized I wasn’t good, that I had a long way to go. At that level, I wasn’t competitive. I was junior level, not professional, and the others were much better than me,” he recalled.
That unforgettable experience, supervised at all times by his father, Earl Woods, was the prelude to what would come later and would eventually make young Tiger one of the greatest golfers of all time.
Who would have thought that one day he would be as famous as the character who was looking at him from a large poster on the wall of his room. The youngster was Tiger Woods and the gentleman on the wall was Jack Nicklaus. Little Eldrick, Woods’ real name, watched his idol’s record of victories every night and dreamed of emulating him one day. The 18 majors of the master became, over time, an obsession for the Californian. “It has always been my goal to surpass Jack,” Woods has acknowledged several times. And it seemed that the goal was within his reach… until the autumn of 2009 when his life – with the discovery of his infidelities – and his game underwent a radical change.
It is not easy to establish a more or less fair comparison between Nicklaus and Woods on a sporting level, since three and a half decades separate them in their life chronology, and in that time golf has changed a lot in some aspects, such as equipment (clubs and balls) and physical and even mental preparation. However, the essence of the competition, which is none other than the talent of the players, remains. In Nicklaus’ favor, it should be noted that in his time he had to fight against the all-time greats, such as Gary Player, Arnold Palmer or Tom Watson, to cite just a few examples (the first won nine majors, and the other two won eight each).
Analyzing the records of both golf stars, we see that at the age of 36 Tiger (now 43) had won 14 majors and Nicklaus had won 14 of his 18 majors, the first of them when he was 22 (Tiger had 6 majors at that age: 2 at 20 and 4 at 21). The remaining 4 were won by the Golden Bear over a period of a decade, when he was 38, 40 (he won 2) and 46 years. In total, Nicklaus achieved his 18 majors in the course of 25 years, while Woods had accumulated 14 triumphs within 12 years and his fifteenth title has come 11 years later.
Before turning professional, Tiger had won the U.S. Amateur three times in a row, also won the NCAA Championship and was crowned the best in three editions of the U.S. Junior Amateur.
The number of major victories for both Tiger and Nicklaus could have been significantly increased if they had a little luck in the last round, as in both cases they finished second a few times. Nicklaus takes the cake in this regard, as he finished second in no less than 19 majors, while Tiger was one place behind the champion on 6 occasions. The Golden Bear succumbed to Arnold Palmer twice, Lee Treviño four times and Tom Watson four times. Nor could he resist the onslaught of Seve Ballesteros, who beat him by three strokes in the 1979 British Open. The names of Tiger’s rivals, to be honest, do not have in this section (Cabrera, Beem, Yang…) the mythical resonances of the figures who beat Nicklaus in the Grand Slam events.
With his physical ailments overcome (four back surgeries in the last few years), his strength restored and his enormous talent intact, it was only a matter of time before we saw the Tiger of his best days succeed again.
Now, after his victory last year after a five-year drought and his recent good results, with the cherry on top of the Masters, the question is how long it will take for him to become world number one again and if he will be able to equal, if not surpass, Jack Nicklaus’ record of majors. With 15 behind him, Tiger has three more to go to catch up with the Golden Bear. Mission impossible? He could take a cue from his idol Nicklaus, the only player to have won five majors after his 35th birthday, the last when he was 46.
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