timeThe sun rose in Augusta at 6:58 a.m. on Sunday, a full three hours after Tiger Woods. People all over the city were fast asleep, dreaming the same dreams: a vista of pine trees along the first fairway, hitting shots over the water at Amen Point, the long uphill walk to the 18th green, the club president said. Right there Fred Ridley and last year’s champion Jon Rahm will be waiting in that freshly ironed green jacket. Woods said he still has these thoughts himself during the hours of rest between warming up in the evening and warming up again in the morning. For him, it was the sixth victory and shared Jack Nicklaus’ record.
Only a few who hold these ideas have a chance of actually realizing them. In Woods’ 29 years playing here, no one has been more than six shots behind the lead on Sunday. That means you’ll likely need to be at least one under to have a chance of overtaking third-round leader Scotty Scheffler.
You’d have to scroll further than that on the morning leaderboard to find Woods, well ahead of Adam Schenck at even par, Akshay Bhatia at five and JT Poston again two shots behind , Eric Cole shot 10, and until you found him, he was among Denny McCarthy, Tom Kim and Wood’s playing partner for the day, Neal Shipley. ) beside. “We got here this morning and saw Tiger on the practice field and it was like, ‘Oh my God, this is really happening,'” Shipley said afterward.
Indeed. and more. Shipley beat Woods inside and out. He shot 73 and Woods shot 77. Every year here he is asked if he really believes he can win the race, and every year the answer is the same. “If everything goes well, I think I can get another one,” he said this week. “I haven’t gotten to the point where I think I can’t do it.”
When Michael Jordan was 50 years old, he was still studying LeBron James’ games on TV and thinking about how he was going to stop him when they went head-to-head.
Since Woods was involved in a car accident in February 2021, he has played 10 official events at Augusta National and has broken par once. That was when he first came back, shooting 71 in the first round of 2022. The average weekend performance score is 78.75. The truth is, after five microdiscectomies on his back, multiple knee surgeries and a subtalar fusion of his ankle, his body couldn’t sustain him through four days of the championship, nor could it sustain him at Augusta National. The Nationals were up and down the lane.
Woods played 23 holes on Friday and was out again 20 hours later with an 82, eight bogeys and two doubles. It was the worst round he’s ever had in a major, and while he knows more about the course than anyone else, his understanding of how putts break and what risks to take puts him ahead of everyone else. More advantages. He watched King shoot a 66 on Sunday and later said it was exactly the score he had hoped for. “I thought I had it in my system.” Instead, he had three bogeys and a triple on the fifth hole, and after he chipped the first pitch deep into the woods, he ended up hitting three ball.
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The gallery still cheers him on, but it’s a warmer, softer Sunday roar laced with gratitude for all he’s accomplished over the years. He’s probably the only guy here who’s unaware of the fact that he’s actually playing exhibition golf. Others are happy just to see him swing the club, even if his chip shot rolls to his feet, as he did on the fourth green. Sometimes he catches the ball cleanly, like when he completed a 360-yard drive on his second drive, and one enjoys a little of the excitement from before and a flicker of the thought “Maybe, just maybe…” But that’s not the case. .
However, there is compensation. Even Woods seemed to be enjoying every bit of his round. He brought his son Charlie to the practice range. He’s 15 and giving his dad some swing tips, which makes Tiger smile. Around the 16th, Woods interrupted the game to shake hands with commentator Verne Lundqvist, who was retiring after 40 years here. In 2005, when Woods made his famous shot on the 16th hole, Lundqvist had a decision to make. Lundquist shouted. “Have you ever seen anything like this?” We don’t have Verne, no. Although Woods said he will play in three other majors this season and will be back here next year, it seems like we’ll never get that again.
