Tiger Woods and the Ticking Golf Clock

Trying to slow time, one more time

A few days ago, Golf Channel aired footage of Tiger Woods playing golf on the day he turned six years old, Dec. 30, 1981, paired with father, Earl, in a four-ball exhibition match in southern California. In the grainy, jumpy images of that day, Tiger clearly is better at golf than most 6-year-olds and was said to have shot 51 for nine holes. He is a taller version of the child who about three years prior was on television for the first time, on “The Mike Douglas Show.”  He was better than most 2 ½-year-olds, too.

At the end of 2023, Tiger Woods will be eight times as old as he was in that 1981 film of the limber, little boy, a golfer with form and focus who already was taking home hardware for winning tournaments. As the set of numbers in a multiplication table says he will turn 48 in a month, there is hardware in that once-lithe body—his lower back, right leg and ankle, a subtalar fusion in April shortly after the Masters the most recent operation to shelve him from competition for an extended period, a list that has grown to a number that would mark a successful tour career for many men and women.

To see Woods playing this week at the Hero World Challenge is to admire the surgeons and the sweat, the grit and the gift, that have made it possible for him to do so. It has been eight years since Woods, plagued by debilitating back trouble and unable to play the event that he hosts in the Bahamas, said that any competitive golf to come “would be gravy.”

The gravy boat is back on the table again—after a spinal fusion, devastating injuries when he crashed his car at high speed in February of 2021, and the extensive surgeries and recovery necessary in the aftermath of that wreck. The last time Woods was seen competing, it was on a cold, rainy Saturday at Augusta National in the early stages of the third round. He had made the cut on the number—his 23^rd consecutive, tying Gary Player and Fred Couples for the most in a row at the Masters—but he looked as miserable as the weather, and so did his scorecard, as he trudged through seven holes before play was suspended, at times looking like his next step might be his last of the day. In next morning, he withdrew. Ten days later, he announced that he had undergone the subtalar fusion in hopes of easing the pain.

Watching him practice and play nine holes of a pro-am at the Hero World Challenge, modern medicine and old-fashioned desire are on view. His action is smooth and fluid, but it appears that the operation to stabilize the right ankle has lessened his ability to drive off his right side coming through the ball. Whatever he can achieve from here, it will be with a swing that is a folk song to the rock anthem of days long ago. For decades, any number of fine players did their thing with classic moves that aren’t much different from how Tiger is swinging now.

He says the hurting ankle doesn’t hurt anymore. But he was quick to add that other things do and always will. To win PGA Tour victories 80, 81 and 82, his fifth Masters among them, after spinal fusion in April of 2017 will, as time goes on, be seen on a level, or even above, some of the more celebrated chapters of his younger, healthier days.

Woods is back at it now because he says he missed the competition and the camaraderie, the latter having become more important as he has gotten older, his absences from the tournament scene heightening that longing to be around those who do what he does. As Woods was preparing to tee it up Thursday in the first round of the Hero, a friend was telling me about how his nonagenarian father had rallied bigtime in recent months, from being given days to live to being able to return to the driving range and continue a lifelong passion by hitting balls. His mantra to staying vital, according to his son, is what Clint Eastwood, then in his late 80s, told singer Toby Keith: “I don’t let the old man in.”

Keith turned Eastwood’s line into a hit country song released several years ago, “Don’t Let the Old Man In.”

Forty-eight come Dec. 30 is old for a golfer who has been through what Woods has, and the door cracked open after he crashed his car. Someday, because of health or a simple acknowledgement that it’s time, the door will swing wide open as if moved by a gust or a ghost. For now, the ballad of Tiger continues, remaining lyrics to be determined.