Golf: Tiger in twilight

Tiger Woods still has the most famous silhouette in sports, even after all these years.

From behind, the V-shaped back that tapers to the same 32-inch waist. From the front, the same muscular arms gripping a club, right hand over left, in that quiet moment before he coils. Relaxed in the fairway, one hand resting atop a club, the other on a hip, one foot crossed over the other.

All of them classically, identifiably Tiger Woods. Time and age haven’t altered the outline.

Woods is 42 now. He has not won a tournament in five years, a major in 10. He thought as recently as a year ago that he might never play competitive golf again because he could barely stand up. Golf would have to soldier on with stars named Dustin and Justin and Brooks. None of them Tiger, or anything like him.

Yet here he is, Tiger in twilight, and he looks the same, mostly acts the same, and is finally playing somewhat like the man everyone remembers, back in those good years before health and scandal took an ax to his growing legacy.

He even reintroduced the celebratory uppercut on the 18th green at the PGA Championship in August, puncturing the steamy St. Louis air, and it was strange only because he did not win. But even in second place, it signaled he was back.

He knew it. The swelling galleries and television audiences knew it. Those who started wearing red T-shirts with the silhouette of his uppercut and the words “Make Tiger Great Again,” they knew it, too.

Funny, that borrowed allusion. Woods rejoins the cultural landscape in 2018, a far different time and place than when he was last great — everywhere but a golf course, at least. That his re-emergence comes in the Age of Trump is a delicious coincidence, wrought with complexity that Woods would rather avoid.

A golfer who still may be the most famous multicultural athlete on the planet. A president cleaving the country on cultural and racial lines. Occasional golf partners, Woods designing a course that will have Donald Trump’s name on it, Woods evading the subject of their relationship — “We all must respect the office” — while Trump tweets his appreciation.

Somehow, none of that matters. Not here. Not if Woods can help it.

More Approachable,

but Better?

The working angle of his latest act, filled with presumption as much as proof, is that Woods is different now — humbled by the lost years, appreciative of the ongoing support, relieved at the opportunity to be here again.

But is he different? Maybe he’s more relaxed. Chattier during a round, though Woods disagrees. Veteran reporters and close friends say he’s lightened up, more like what they see in private. The testiness that used to accompany bad days has dissolved.

That all seems true, if you’re looking for it. Maybe it’s age and appreciation. Maybe the stakes and expectations haven’t been high enough yet.

To trail Woods at a golf tournament each day, from the moment he arrives to the moment he leaves, is to see two sides of a man who works hard to show only one. There is a person and a persona.

Fans don’t make the distinction. They like the familiarity. They roar in his ear when he makes a good shot. They smile in his wake no matter the blankness of his expression. They want it to be 2008. Make Tiger Great Again.

“We love you, Tiger!”

“You’re still the man, Tiger!”

“Welcome back, Tiger!”

Woods has always had some ill-defined “it” factor that drew our attention. It is even harder to explain now.

Is it all about his ability — or his former ability — to play golf? His personality? His charity work? His skin color, as the son of an African-American father and a Thai mother, which still stands out in the starkly white establishment of golf?

These days, is it more about where he has been than where he might take us? Appreciation or expectation?

You wonder what he could do to irretrievably break the hold. You wonder if parents tell their children about the mistresses and the famous Thanksgiving car crash into the neighborhood fire hydrant, about the prescription pills and TMZ headlines and police mug shots as recently as last year after an arrest on charges of driving under the influence.

But golf is a self-conscious world steeped in decorum. It is not a typical sports arena. There is no tolerance for insults. It is no place for scorn. I

So the masses go along, in their polo shirts and belted shorts, racing from one shot to the next. As Woods nears, they stare at him, like something caged in a zoo. Giddy from proximity, and maybe a few beers, they whisper about him in golf voices.

He looks good, dude. He looks fit. (He weighs between 180 and 185 pounds, same as he has for 20 years. Having slowed his fitness routine because of his back — more resistance training and stretching, fewer weights and less running — he tracks this with a full-sized doctor’s scale in his Florida kitchen.)

You see his entourage anywhere? Wonder if his girlfriend is here. (Over there, behind you. It’s Erica Herman, Woods’ 34-year-old live-in girlfriend of two years, standing with Rob McNamara, 43, Woods’ right-hand man. They follow every hole, inconspicuously strolling behind the mobs.)

Oooh, what’s he eating? (It’s peanut-butter-and-banana on pumpernickel. His caddie makes it for him.)

Wait, where’s he going? (To the portable toilet.) Oh, there he is. He’s back. Way to go, Tiger! He goes to the bathroom just like us! And so it goes, hole after hole, day after day.

In return he gives his talent and reputation and an averted gaze. Not much more. Woods always felt like a mashup of robotics and marketing. Cold constraint was wired into the design.

Injury and Scandal,

and Recovery

Forty-two is an awkward age for a professional golfer. If talent and desire have not abandoned you, youth and strength have probably passed you. Most contemporaries are gone.

Woods’ career is usually divided into Before Thanksgiving 2009 and After Thanksgiving 2009. That was the night that a tabloid-perfect infidelity scandal erupted. Woods crashed his Escalade near his home and his wife, Elin Nordegren, smashed the window with a golf club.

A parade of women emerged to say they had affairs with Tiger Woods. Sponsors tiptoed away. Woods went to rehabilitation for sex addiction. He and Nordegren, parents of a 2-year-old girl and an infant boy at the time, divorced.

He rebuilt his career, slowly, in the bubble wrap of the golf world, where naysayers are fenced out and ticket sales and television ratings jumped with every precious Woods appearance. A victory in 2012. Five more in 2013. The lost No. 1 ranking, restored.

Then, the lower-back problems. There were three microdiscectomy surgeries in 20 months. There were only 19 starts from 2014 to 2017. His best finish was 10th.

In desperation, Woods had a fourth back surgery — this time, spinal fusion in April 2017. It removed a disc and grafted two lower-back vertebrae (L5 and S1) into one less-mobile one, like welding two rusty and unreliable links of a chain together.

“If it doesn’t fuse, there really is no other option,” Woods recalled last week.

Weeks later, in May 2017, he was found asleep at the wheel of his running car. Toxicology reports found prescription painkillers and sleeping pills, plus an active ingredient in marijuana, in his system. Woods pleaded guilty to reckless driving and went to treatment.

He did not swing a club for months. Then reports circulated around the tour. Players had been with Woods at home in South Florida and said he was hitting again, looking and feeling good. He got rid of his coach. He swapped out every club in his bag. Tiger is coming back, they said. For real. Just watch.

And here we are, watching. And here he is, having finished second in the PGA after being sixth in the British Open, looking like the good parts of the past are possible again.

Woods’ swing looks virtually the same to anyone who has seen him over the past 10 or 15 years. The effect of the fusion surgery may be mostly in his follow-through, as he tends to lift up his shoulders a fraction of a second earlier than before.

He still swings the club 120 mph, faster than most. The drives don’t fly quite as far as they used to, but farther than most. Accuracy off the tee and putting have been his peskiest issues, but he still had the Tour’s 10th-best scoring average at the end of August.

Now he’s off to the Ryder Cup, and a $9 million pay-per-view match with longtime rival Phil Mickelson in November, and there is already talk of (and betting lines for) Woods winning a major in 2019. After all, the U.S. Open is at Pebble Beach, where he won by 15 strokes in 2000, and the PGA is at Bethpage Black, where he won the 2002 U.S. Open. And before any of that is the Masters, which Woods has won four times.

A year ago, it looked like Woods might never play again. Now it feels like he could play to 50, if the gods of injury and scandal keep their distance.

Tiger Woods is back, at 42, in 2018, far more than a memory, in good humor but keeping most of his thoughts to himself. He is a renewed but older man in a different age, forever recognizable from a distance.

Welcome back, Tiger, the people shout, waiting for a response.