Tiger Woods will turn 50 on December 30. As things stand he has 82 PGA Tour wins and 15 Majors but the talk now is more of whether he will play on the Champions Tour.
His first Major win came over 28 years ago, which ages all of us, and 13 of them came between the final big one of 1999 and the US Open in 2008.
Here we look back at five of his Major wins, all mighty performances from the modern-day GOAT.
1) 2008 US Open
The simple facts are that Tiger was playing with a double stress fracture of his left tibia and he would have anterior cruciate ligament surgery shortly after Torrey Pines.
He wouldn’t play again all year.
And he had to play 91 holes, finishing bizarrely on the 7th hole where Rocco Mediate bogeyed.
Robert Karlsson played with Tiger in round three and heard a repeated clicking noise coming from his leg, at other times Woods was doubled up and it seemed like he would have to leave the course in an ambulance. Somehow he would make two eagles on the back nine and chip in at 17.
Come Sunday he doubled the 1st, bogeyed the next but came to the last needing a birdie to force an 18-hole play-off with Mediate. After various bumps and breaks it somehow dropped. We forget that he also birdied 18 in the play-off to keep things going.
2) 2019 Masters
This wasn’t the most dramatic, it was actually quite dull in places due to the weather and early start, but Woods was now 43 and hadn’t won a Major since that 2008 victory.
He had a fused back and didn’t even tee it up in a Major in the 2016 and 2017 seasons. But 2018 promised plenty, he came close at Carnoustie and the PGA and then captured the Tour Championship.
So it wasn’t a huge surprise on the week but, for the previous six years, it had been one long battle with his body. There were countless surgeries and procedures and, for a few months, he had even forgotten how to chip.
On the Masters Sunday he had to get up in the middle of the night just to get his body ready to take on a wet and long course and a field packed with the very best. In the end he ground them all down and we got one last chance to see how his name affected those around him.
3) 2000 US Open
It’s a slight surprise looking back that this was just his third Major win but, within two more seasons, he was soon up to eight. The week of Pebble Beach was the ultimate masterclass and the only chance of anything upsetting things was when caddy Steve Williams only had one ball in the bag when Woods came back to complete his second round.
He led by one after day one and six after the second round. The cut fell on +7, Woods was well clear on -8. By Sunday he had a 10-shot lead and he then added a 67 to win by 15, the largest ever Major victory. There were 21 birdies and there was even a treble-bogey on the Saturday.
No other player bettered par, Woods was -12. To that point no played had ever finished a US Open in double digits under par.
A great quiz question is which players finished second? The answers: Ernie Els and Miguel Angel Jimenez.
“Whatever I say is going to be an understatement. He’s just a great player. He’s only 24 years old. It seems like we’re not playing in the same ball park right now. When he’s on, you don’t have much of a chance,” said Els.
“If I played out of my mind, I probably still would have lost by 5, 6, 7. He’s a phenomenal player. That’s an understatement, probably.”
4) 1997 Masters
The beauty, in among everything else, was that Woods began his week by going out in 40 shots playing alongside the defending champion, Nick Faldo. He then made four birdies and an eagle – he had a wedge for his approach to 15! – to come back in 30.
Woods then shot the best rounds of the day on Friday and Saturday, 66-65, and he made a par at the 72nd hole knowing full well that his 18-under effort would be a new Masters record.
And all this in his first Major as a pro and at 21 years of age. The ’Tiger Proofing’ of Augusta would follow though he added three more Green Jackets in the next eight years.
For the record this was his fourth win on the PGA Tour in the space of six months after turning pro. Tom Kite is the answer to this quiz question.
5) 2000 Open
You’d have to include one of his three Open wins and this was the one where he somehow avoided every single bunker around the Old Course. This came just a few weeks after the Pebble Beach massacre and this time he would win by eight.
You might want to go for the Royal Liverpool effort six years later, where he hit one driver all week (mainly because he couldn’t), but this was the consummate all-round display.
All four rounds in the 60s, he finished the week on -19. There were no dropped shots in the first two days and three all week, two of which came on the Road Hole. David Duval might have reduced Woods’ lead to two with eight to play but we all know the script – he holes, they miss – and the rest was a procession.
Thomas Bjorn and Els again were the runners-up.
“It certainly looks like somebody out there is playing golf on a different planet than the rest of us,” said Bjorn. “When he brings his A-game, he’s just different class.”
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