Wins 15th major title with one-shot win at Masters
April 14, 2019
Tiger Woods summoned all the might of his wearying body, drew on unfathomable desire and steel, unmatched experience and bottomless nostalgia to win at Augusta for the first time in 14 years and seal a return to the pinnacle of sport on the greatest Sunday in Masters history.
After the squalid unraveling, the strife and spinal fusion surgeries, the 43-year-old beat away the tides and capitalized on the mistakes of his peers until the last were swept away with a two-under-par 70. A fifth Green Jacket and a 15th major to complete a Lazarus-like comeback that will forever live amongst the sporting Gods.
Then & Now: (Left) 21-year-old Tiger and his father Earl Woods embrace following his very first Masters win in 1997. (Right) Tiger embraces his son Charlie after winning his 5th Masters at August National today.
Starting early in the final group, the lead was initially exchanged like an unwanted burden as the players started early to beat the incoming thunderstorms. At one stage, Woods, Francesco Molinari, Tony Finau, Dustin Johnson and Xander Shauffele batted it between themselves with the twists and sudden endings of a crime drama script as even Patrick Cantlay to a hauntingly brief charge of the leaderboard and threatened to leave the world drowned in anti-climax.
But it was Woods, who after starting in fits and spurts, fizzed into life on the back nine as those around him cratered. It had at first seemed as if fate had conspired to pull at the heartstring as his putts repeatedly trickled centimeters short and left the crowd in fits of sighs as they attempted to blow him over the line.
But after a turbulent 10 holes featuring three birdies and three bogeys, Woods evoked the devastating precision of old. A methodical birdie at the 13th to move into a share of the lead, a calmness to take a two-putt birdie on the 15th as Molinari’s hopes sank in the water.
On the par-3 16, after moving into the outright lead, Woods pitched his tee-shot above the hole, let it ran back with the slope and was only denied a hole-in-one by inches to go two clear with two to play. From there on, his iron-grip never showed a glimpse of letting go. The crowd no longer blowing him forward, but struck in breathless awe. It evoked vintage Tiger Woods, capitalizing at the precise moment that his competitors showed weakness to complete perhaps the greatest comeback in the history of sport.
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