Tales of Tiger’s top 10 putts of all time: Check out Nos. 10-9-8

8. 9^th hole, Augusta National Golf Club

Final round of 2019 Masters

A resurrected Woods was trying to win the Masters for the first time since 2005 and his first major since he limped to victory in the 2008 U.S. Open. He was in the final group on the final day and hot on the heels of leader Francesco Molinari after birdies on the seventh and eighth.

Then Woods faced his toughest putt in the final round – a 65-footer from the back of the three-tiered green at the ninth, with the pin on the front tier of the slippery sloping surface. In a practice round he faced a similar putt in a closest-to-the-pin contest with Justin Thomas and Fred Couples. When the chips were down with higher stakes on the line, Woods delivered another exquisite putt.

Taking a line about eight feet to the right of the hole and gently stroking the ball – which at times looked like it was going to stop well short – the ball came to rest within tap-in range. Woods let loose a few subdued mini-fist pumps as he walked to finish off his par.

“Fortunately and unfortunately, I’ve had that putt before,” Woods said. “I have left it on the middle shelf, and so that’s obviously not where you want to be. But also, it’s very easy to putt the ball over the green, or actually down the front edge of the green. The good thing that I had going for me was at that time, the wind was a little bit into me, so I had a little bit of a backboard with that wind being slightly into me. But it’s being committed to hitting that ball up there into that fringe, or near the fringe. Only problem is if you get it too far right, actually, it gets a little steeper and picks up a lot of speed.

“The conservative approach is to play it a little bit left of the hole and you know you take your 10-, 15-footer and move on with a four or five. But I decided to take a little bit more of a risk.”

Calamity ensued on the 12^th hole, Woods birdied the 13^th and 15^th and nearly aced the 16^th and won by one shot for his fifth green jacket and 15^th major triumph. All set up by the putt on the ninth.

Coming up: Nos. 7, 6 and 5 on the list. Two of those came in the final rounds of majors. The other came in a playoff at the Masters.

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