Editor’s note: CBS will replay the 2019 Masters from 12:30-6 p.m. Sunday.
Last month, after the Masters became one of many sporting events to be postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic, it didn’t take long for astute fans to realize one of the fascinating unintended consequences of the decision:
Tiger Woods would remain defending champion far longer than usual.
When Augusta National announced earlier this week that it was moving the Masters to Nov. 12-15, it became clear that Tiger’s 14-year wait between Masters victories, and nearly 11-year drought between majors, would be rewarded with another seven months to reign as the king of the green jackets.
It will be almost Thanksgiving by the time Tiger is no longer Masters champion – unless he wins again, which means he would have less than five months before April 2021 to try to do it again.
And, while we’re looking ahead, consider the 2022 Masters, when Tiger will be 46, the same age that Jack Nicklaus was when he so improbably won the Masters in 1986.
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. This long, uncertain break as the nation has shut down due to the pandemic has to be helping the oft-injured Tiger gear up for what very well could be the most bizarre golf season we have ever seen.
If American life starts to get back to some semblance of normal by this summer, we could see the PGA Championship in early August, as it’s scheduled now, followed by the most interesting back-to-back timing on the golf calendar in memory: the U.S. Open, then the Ryder Cup, one week to the next in mid-to-late September.
Tiger has barely played this year, finishing ninth at the Farmers Insurance Open in January and 68th at the Genesis Invitational in February. Last month, he missed the one round of the Players Championship that was played because his back was “just not ready,” he said.
But he said this week that he would have been ready for the Masters had it been played as usual in April. “Night and day,” he told GolfTV of the change in his health over the past month or so. “I feel a lot better than I did then.”
However, because he has played so little so far this year, there is no certainty that he could have recaptured the form that delivered the sports comeback for the ages, his fifth Masters victory, on April 14, 2019.
It was so fitting that Woods – who endured a jaw-dropping personal scandal in 2009 and four surgeries on his back, including spinal fusion two years earlier – ended his major drought in Augusta, where he won his first major in 1997 as a 21-year-old.
The Masters will always be Tiger’s best chance to win a major every year. When he’s 50, as long as he’s healthy, his name will rise onto the leaderboard one day or another, just as has happened with Fred Couples and Bernhard Langer. Tiger was made for the Masters, and vice versa.
Remember what happened last year, when one competitor after another fell by the wayside that final day — not one, not two, not three but four of the men in or near the lead hit shots into Rae’s Creek in front of the par-3 12th hole Sunday. It was as if the gods of golf had come down from the heavens and personally cleared Tiger’s path to victory.
Tiger, of course, believes he would have been in prime position to do it again this spring because he always thinks he will win every tournament he enters, but this break will serve him well. He needs the time and even more important, his back needs the time.
As things stand now, he would have a little more than a month between the PGA Championship and the U.S. Open, but then no time off at all between the Open and the Ryder Cup, which could be a challenge for him physically. But then comes good news: he would have six weeks until the Masters.
For now, he’s practicing social distancing, and golf, at his home course in Florida, and spending time with his kids at home.
“I go back to what my dad used to say,” he said in the interview this week. “Just take it one meal to the next. So you go at it until the next meal, and you figure it out.”
He sounds content, and he should be. He still owns the title that means the most to him. He remains Masters champion.
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