He rose from the ashes, from his calamitous sentimental life and his painful injuries (eight operations: four back and four knee surgeries), fell, resurfaced, won again a major, his fifteenth, three away from equaling Nicklaus’… Tiger’s killer instinct never disappears. Tiger, at 43 years of age, exudes talent on all four sides. Now, early this morning Spanish time, he has just equaled in Japan nothing less than the record number of tournaments won on the PGA Tour, 82, held until now by Sam Snead alone. It took the golf legend 29 years to reach that number of victories on the U.S. Tour. Woods turned professional in 1996, 23 years ago, so he has a long way to go to pulverize Snead’s mark and, perhaps, to hunt down the king of the Grand Slam and equal and perhaps surpass the Golden Bear’s eighteen majors.
Tiger’s Japanese triumph was staged at the Zozo Championship, played at Accordia Golf Narashino, and culminated in style, with a birdie on the 18th and three strokes ahead of second-placed Hideki Matsuyama.
Having reached the record of 82 wins on the PGA Tour at the age of 43 is one more milestone in his miraculous recovery. And is that until a few years ago, Tiger was already almost an ex-player, physically destroyed as a result of his back and knee ailment, and on top of that with the slab of public scorn for his sex scandals in 2009 and his arrest on suspicion of driving under the influence of chemicals, in 2017.
“I couldn’t lift a golf club; life gave me a second chance,” he confessed before the 2018 Masters. He added: “Before the last surgery I had to be helped for six months to get out of bed. And there were days that even if I was helped, I couldn’t stand up. I would lie on the floor or on the bed. It was the hardest part of my life.
The slow recovery of the genius came in September 2018, with the victory in the last playoff of the FedEx Cup, the Tour Championship, which meant returning to triumph on the PGA Tour after five seasons. And in April this year he sounded the big bell by winning the Masters, which ended a drought of eleven years without majors and marked his fifteenth Grand Slam victory.
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