The Tiger effect knows no bounds.
During a trawl at social media updates and messages on my mobile phone as the news emerged of Tiger Woods’ frightful car crash on Tuesday, this scribe glimpsed a Twitter tribute to him from former President Barack Obama one minute and a text of concern for him from my dear mam the next. Woods truly does transcend sport like no other.
In a long line of tumultuous twists in the Tiger tale, this latest chapter of his incredible, endlessly fascinating story makes for harrowing reading. The damage to his legs is considerable. That he was, according to the LA county deputy at the scene, “lucky to get out of this alive” is a great mercy.
Woods’ career has been one characterised by extraordinary feats. Getting back on his feet again after this traumatic episode will require all the dogged, defiant, resilient strength of character and mind that has made him, arguably, the greatest golfer of all time.
In recent years, Woods, with a patched up body that was crumbling like the Acropolis, would talk in superhuman terms. “I’m a walking miracle,” he said ahead of the 2018 Masters. When he won the Green Jacket a year later, his 15th major title and a first since 2008, he proved that miracles do happen.
During a sustained period of personal, professional, physical and psychological torment, Woods had been regularly cast as done and dusted, down and out or dead and buried.
Career obituaries and gushing eulogies had all been trotted out as bad backs led to setbacks and comebacks were followed by more bad backs, setbacks and aborted comebacks. Through it all, of course, Woods retained a deep, unwavering motivation, a quite remarkable trait given all that he had endured in a life of epic, epoch-making triumphs, revelations of tawdry trysts and countless painful procedures before that rousing, redemptive Augusta conquest.
Where there was once invincibility, there would be many displays of fallibility and fragility. But where the focus used to be on exerting a tyrannical rule over the global game, the last few years have seen him liberated with much more emphasis on Woods the family man and discovering off course contentment with his two children.
Only last weekend, Woods, who had been recovering from a fifth operation on his dodgy dorsal, was being asked about the possibility of playing all four rounds of April’s Masters. “God, I hope so,” was his response. Whether he ever plays again is a question not even those golfing gods can answer. The most pressing priority, of course, is that he returns to good health.
In the frenzied aftermath of his terrible accident, widespread comparisons were, inevitably, being made to Ben Hogan, who suffered multiple, horrendous, life-threatening injuries when his car was hit by a bus in 1949 but recovered to win six majors from 1950. Hogan was 36 at the time, though. Woods is a physically ravaged 45.
During his period of convalescence, Hogan was told he may never walk again. When he started walking, they said he’d struggle to play golf again. When he returned to golf, the doubters said he’d never play competitively again. And when he resumed hostilities on the tour, the naysayers said he’d never win again.
Hogan, majestically, proved them all wrong. As for Woods? “You never give up, you always fight,” he said after his Masters win two years ago. “Giving up is never in the equation.”
That indomitable spirit will be needed more than ever now.
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