He is hard not to notice on the grounds at Liberty National.
Divide him by five and you’ve got five members for the Hall Of Fame.
He’s legendary, he’s walking golf history with 79 wins and 14 majors. Add up the entire U.S. Presidents Cup team and you don’t have those numbers.
He is at the Presidents Cup matches because he longs for the spotlight, the noise, the attention.
Golf’s ultimate narcissist has found himself alone too often back home in Jupiter, bored and probably, deep down inside, battling depression.
He’s been taken apart by four back surgeries, eight total surgeries and now, perhaps, he understands it could be over for him.
Tiger Woods admitted that earlier this week before the action started at the Presidents Cup. The world’s most famous assistant captain had his own press conference, and that’s not something that happens with assistant captains. Then again, there’s never been any sort of assistant captain in golf with 79 wins and 14 majors.
Woods sat there, not as brash as he used to be, not quite as pompous or abusive to the press as he used to be.
He got hit square between the eyes with the ultimate double-whammy question:
“Could you see a scenario where you could not come back to competitive golf?”
Then came the response that set the golf world on its collective heels:
“Yeah, definitely. I don’t know what my future holds for me. As I’ve told you guys, I’m hitting 60-90-yard shots.”
So said Eldrick Woods, the man whose career obsession was the number 18.
Now he struggles just to become whole again.
“I’ve been out of the game for a while. First things first, get my health organized. Make sure the pain goes away.”
Woods told everyone the pain was gone. Then came the Memorial Day incident — asleep at the wheel, on the inside lane. Dazed, disoriented.
Tiger looks good walking around Liberty National. Most popular guy on campus, still is.
The Jordan Spieths and Justin Thomases of the world look at him and see the records, the wins, the majors. There’s nothing left to this heroic champion that concerns them. He cannot beat these guys.
Same for Dustin Johnson, who hopes that Woods might defy the odds and return to the competitive game.
“Yeah,” began Johnson this week, “I think Tiger is good for the game of golf. You know all of us have a lot to be thankful for. He grew this game tremendously and he helped us all out a lot, making the game very popular. We make a lot more money because of him. I’d like to see him come back and play well. It’s good for golf. It would be a lot of fun. I got to play against him when he was playing very well and I’ve played on teams with him. He helped out at the Ryder Cup last year, spent a lot of time with Tiger. Yeah, I’d definitely like to see him come back and compete.”
You could poll most of the PGA Tour and they’d echo D.J’s thoughts.
At age 42, Woods is not only battling his body, he’s battling time, which remains undefeated against world-class athletes.
There’s no timetable for Woods, there hasn’t been for the last several years.
Fact is that deep inside, Woods probably knows, probably knows it’s not going to happen.
He has nothing left to prove in the game of golf. Nothing.
What he will have to find is life after golf and maybe he’s rehearsing for that this week at Liberty National.
