You’ll find all sorts of characters hanging around the bottom of the Open leaderboards. Denwit Boriboonsub is a 20-year-old Thai player who qualified for the Malaysia Open by shooting 28 on the back nine. Altin van der Merwe is a South African amateur who has just quit his day job as a waiter to focus on golf. Wyndham Clark won the U.S. Open last year, his only top-30 finish in a major. Todd Hamilton, 58, who scored his one-man grand slam at Royal Troon 20 years ago, still bowls every summer to make the most of the exemption he gets as a result.
Oh, and there was a guy named Eldrick Woods, known as “Tiger” to those who knew him. Woods shot a 77 in the second round after shooting a 79 in the first round, giving him a 36-hole total of 156. 11 shots outside the cut line. It was his worst week at the Open, and if not for the final three-foot putt on No. 18, it would have been his worst 36-hole score in a major. In fact, it matched his 80-76 mark at the 2015 U.S. Open at Chambers Bay.
Woods has reached the point where he will never play in an Open again without having to endure speculation that it might be his last. People have been trying to retire him ever since he walked across the Sverkan Bridge in the second round of the 150th tournament in St Andrew a few years ago. As he limped off the pitch at Troon, he was asked again if he would play at Royal Portrush next year. “Yes,” Woods said without hesitation, “of course.”
He’s equally forthright about his approach to the game. “It’s not good,” he said. “I struggled with it pretty much all day. I never really got close enough to make birdies, so I had a lot of bogeys. Five shots total, plus a four on the second hole It could have been worse on the eighth hole when he blew a chip shot 10 yards from the pin on the far side of the green. A par, as sprinklers were rolling down the bank into a bunker on the right side of the green, and he got a lucky break.
Some of his best golf performances were the way he climbed out of the worst situations on the two longer holes. On the sixth hole, he chipped in from the rough on the right and tossed the ball into the gallery on the left. He still somehow managed to make a birdie (his only one of the round) after he made the putt from 21 feet. On the 16th hole, he made a stunning par on a putt from 13 feet, despite hitting the burn with his first shot and slamming his third into the stands.
The thing is, those were pretty much the only two putts he made from any distance all day. You could find him on the field by listening to the roar back then. Today, you can track him through his sighs and winces.
You wouldn’t necessarily guess it watching Woods limping and making faces on the course, but Woods insists he had a great time there. “I love it, I’ve always loved playing in big tournaments. I just wish I was sharper physically. Obviously, it tests you mentally, physically and emotionally, and I just wasn’t as sharp as I needed to be. I was hoping to be sharper at some point. There are ways to find it, but I haven’t found it yet.
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Woods’ goal this year was “to make sure I play in all the majors,” which he succeeded in doing, although he missed the cut in three of them and finished 60th in another. He insists that despite this, he is still improving. “Even though my results don’t really show it, I’m getting better physically, so I just have to keep improving like that and eventually start playing more competitively and start getting into competitive shape again.” Not happening anytime soon. He doesn’t plan to compete before December.
If he believes it, though, it doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks. Woods’ legacy is that he gets to do what he loves. Although Woods is exempt, he has long since earned the right to play however he pleases. The man made the sport what it is today, and why so many others seem eager to retire him is a bit of a mystery. He remains one of the most attractive men in the field, drawing crowds of five or six, even if it feels like the only reason they’re here is so they can say they caught a glimpse of what he once was.
