AUGUSTA NATIONAL — “Now I know why I’m balding.” Tiger Woods began his press conference yesterday after his fifth Masters victory with a joke. There was also emotion, relief, disbelief, gratitude, humility, a range of responses that were hard to find in his first incarnation as a sporting deity.
To witness Woods in that epic first flowering, scooping majors at a rate of accumulation the game had never seen, was up there with the great rewards of a career spent documenting special moments. The sheer scale of his talent and his achievements inspired awe in observers. With the game face on the experience was not always endearing but it was undeniably invigorating.
In this, his mature, more reflective phase he is demonstrably more open and sensitive to the perspective of others in this business, as if being given a second shot at the sport he loves has made him thankful.
Execution under pressure
From this side of the sporting spectacle there is no way of knowing how great sportsmen and women do what they do. The technical accomplishments are just a part of it.
Read more: Tiger Woods’ Masters win is the greatest story in golfing history. Maybe in the whole of sport
It is the preternatural execution under pressure before a global audience that is incomprehensible. Thousands thronging the arena, millions watching on myriad platforms, all scrutinising every element of performance. Try shopping in Tesco with all eyes on you. You wouldn’t reach the till.
Woods transformed the landscape, a totem in a sea of white privilege. Even now the lack of ethnic diversity in this sport is still felt keenly, especially at Augusta, where the surrounding neighbourhoods are populated by African Americans anchored to privation and struggle.
Woods is invariably one of the few black faces in any golfing field. Empowered as he is by wealth and celebrity Woods is protected from the sharp edge of prejudice in a way he was not in his youth. This might explain the bloody attitude, and inscrutable face he presented in the power years.
Rise, fall and rise again
There was little to match the exhilaration of walking inside the ropes with Woods during his emasculation of St Andrews in 2000. Across baked fairways, under diamond skies he was the sun god of golf winning his first Open championship and fourth major title by eight strokes.
He was 24, the youngest to claim all four majors. His aggregate score of 19-under-par was the lowest in Major history. He became that summer arguably the most recognisable athlete on the planet.
I was harbourside in Monaco in 2006 when Michael Schumacher parked his Ferrari at Rascasse during qualifying to prevent title rival Fernando Alonso setting a time; I sat in the Birdcage when Usain Bolt won Olympic gold; I saw Lennox Lewis flatten Mike Tyson in Memphis in 2002; watched Leo Messi torment Manchester United in the Champions League final in Rome; looked on mesmerised among 110,000 people when Indian supporters set fire to the seats at Eden Gardens in Kolkata after the 1997 World Cup quarter-final defeat to Sri Lanka; saw Michael Phelps win the last of his 28 Olympic medals in Rio.
All of that was sporting gold but if I had to choose, walking with Woods in 2000 would be my pick, until this, that is. I suspect it’s all downhill from here.
