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AUGUSTA, Ga. – The former winners of the Masters gathered in the Champions' locker room because they understood what they were watching and knew that they had to do something special for Eldrick Tiger Woods. Bernhard Langer, Bubba Watson, Zach Johnson, Adam Scott – they all understood that they could not just close their lockers, bid farewell, and jump into their luxury cars to regain their privileged lives.
Langer, 61, was the eldest in the group, the leader of the group. The former winners showered after their rounds, had a drink and watched Woods play the 72nd hole on television.
"We heard great joy," said Langer, marking the end of one of the biggest American sports stories ever told. "And we all said: Let's put our jackets down and down there to congratulate him. And that's what we did."
Langer played in the 1986 Masters. Jack Nicklaus had won his sixth green jacket and his 18th and final final at 46 years old. It was now Woods' No. 5 Jacket, 43, and Major No. 15 after a 14-year drought for the Masters and a decade. more for the majors. Langer would not grant a superior advantage to the other, but he did not need it. The two-time Masters champion is assured that he was wearing his green jacket when he shook hands with Woods.
"It's a very special moment in the history of golf, of Augusta and Tiger himself," said Langer.
No one who was here this surreal Sunday will ever forget how the land has moved or how the roars have risen over towering pines. Nobody will ever forget the scene where Charlie, Woods' son, fell into his father's arms as Tiger fell into his father's arms after his record-breaking 21-year win in 1997, which blew up barriers. regarded him as a "YouTube golfer", as a dynastic force on the Internet and video games, but as something completely different in the flesh.
Back injuries and ineffective surgeries had left Woods trapped in debilitating pain. He could not walk, sit, lie down or get out of bed. The epidurals and injections of cortisone did not relieve him.
"They only knew that golf was causing me a lot of pain," Woods said of his children.
Physically and emotionally.
Sam (his daughter) and Charlie were present at Carnoustie last summer when their father – miraculously competing after a desperate spinal fusion operation, saved his career – lost his lead on Sunday at the Open Championship and lost his duel face to face with Francesco. Molinari, who started the last round of this Masters with a two-run lead.
"I would not let that happen to them twice," Tiger said.
Woods was also not about to let Brooks Koepka, another serious Masters challenger, beat him as he had done at the PGA Championship. Blind believer in his chances, Tiger woke up in the middle of the night to prepare his weathered body for a battle that would begin at 9:20 as the Augusta National elders wanted to defeat the predicted storms.
Woods refused to let anyone or anything rain on his parade. He suffered consecutive bogeys at No. 4 and 5 to fall back to three against Molinari. He seemed destined for another near-miss. But Tiger's younger brother, Joe LaCava, began to curse his reader. Then Woods went to the toilet and cursed himself before a new man emerged.
LaCava had told him earlier: "Never lose tension, but be relaxed, do not carry the weight of the world on your shoulders."
1:37
Twenty-two years after hugging his father to celebrate his first Masters win, Tiger Woods kisses his children after winning his fifth title at Augusta.
Woods remained suspended for the rest of this indelible journey. He waited until Molinari – usually a steel man – cracked under pressure. And the crack that Molinari surely made at the 12th hole, where he sent his ball into the creek. Fans of tigers watching from the tee started to cheer and be moved. The game of the ball had changed completely, and as the rain began to fall and the green and white umbrellas began to appear all along the course, these deafening fans were walking through the trees as if the sun were there. and the sky perfectly blue.
Molinari cut a tree and found water on the 15th, where Woods surely grabbed his second five iron shot on the putting green at normal 5. Tiger's first memory of the Masters was to watch Nicklaus celebrate his iron 4 on the same hole 33 years ago.
"I've never seen anyone ever celebrate an iron shot in a green," Woods said.
He also remembered Nicklaus wrapping an arm around his younger son, Jackie Jr., as they walked triumphantly from the 18th green.
Woods was heading to his own father-son when his avatar of 15 gave him the lead at 13. But first, Tiger had to hit the kind of shot on the 16th that Nicklaus hit in 86. On the starting mound, while Molinari was looking at his feet after his disastrous double bogey, Woods turned to his younger brother.
"Do you like a cut 7-[iron] or a good 8? "he asked.
"That's only a good 8," retorted LaCava. "You know it, what are you trying to be nice to me?"
Woods was just showing the same temerity that a 46-year-old Nicklaus showed his junior with his tee shot in full flight on the 16th.
"Be right," Jackie shouted that day. "That's it," said his father, leaning over to take his shirt.
Jackie was on the national court of Augusta Sunday when Tiger hit his shot a little closer than Nicklaus. As they approached the putting green, Woods asked LaCava to take a look at his putting line. "See?" said the incredulous cadet. "It's a foot and a half."
"Left center," Tiger replied.
"Go ahead," said LaCava.
Woods tried his luck at the Masters as he has not done since his last win in 2005, when he shot the signature photo of his career – his magical and mysterious plot – on the same 16th hole.
1:17
Tiger Woods ponders what it means to win his fifth Masters, claiming that it is a tournament that he will never forget.
Walk 18 represented golf's response to a religious experience. People who had attended dozens of Masters did not remember the crowds so deep along the fairway and the green. It seemed that there was no man, woman or child in the house who was looking for something other than the bald terminator in red.
Woods knew that Bogey would still win, but he also knew that Arnold Palmer had once doubled the 72nd hole to lose the Masters. Tiger was not about to shoot an Arnie. As he stood near the faucet that he would replay in his mind a trillion times this week alone, Woods said to himself, "Come on, stay focused, stay focused, stay focused, get engaged."
The gallery which was as silent as an empty church at midnight whenever Woods was about to play a shot exploded when the final putt fell and the winner raised his fist and threw his arms energetically the air as he let out a cry of release. . Tiger had beaten the two men who had prevented him from winning major victories last year – Molinari and Koepka – and he was completely mocked. He only wanted to hug his mother, Kultida, who had spent the last round at the clubhouse screaming deliriously at her son's picture on TV. Tiger only wanted to kiss his two children.
Dressed in his father's colors, the red shirt and the black cap (though Charlie's was overthrown, of course), Tiger's son rushed to his father's house behind the 18th green. Tiger took him in his arms. Neither father nor son wanted to let go. Fans soon chanted Tiger's name as he headed for the scores room, cutting through what Koepka called "a monsoon of people". Tiger thanked them, reaching out and clapping their hands. He was congratulated at the end of this walk by Langer and other former champions in green jackets, as well as by Koepka and other young guns who grew up idolizing him.
"It was the coolest thing to see all these players greet him," said PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan. "They all competed against Tiger, and they all lost to him."
0:40
Tiger Woods puts on the green jacket and raises the Masters trophy for the fifth time in his career.
Before Woods went to the green of the ceremony of the Butler Cabin ceremony in his green jacket, where he raised the trophy and smiled widely for the cameras, his longtime assistant, Rob McNamara, was held in front of the club and cited the victory last fall in East Lake as critical to the way the day went.
"Mentally," said McNamara, "winning the Tour Championship was everything."
As Woods left the photo shoot on the putting green and headed for a gray van, fans pursued him and last year's champion, Patrick Reed, stamped, the latter was ignored while qu & # 39; He made his way through the traffic. On the parking lot, dressed in a Saquon Barkley t-shirt under his Masters suit, LaCava was sitting in the loading area of a black Mercedes SUV with the yellow flag of the 18th hole well concealed behind him. The cadet did not want to talk about Woods only as a new champion; he also wanted to talk about him as a renewed man.
"They are fervent people, he talks to people, he signs autographs," LaCava said. "He's much more friendly to the fans, which I think is great, he's great with the kids, he's talking more with the guys in the bands … and everybody is shooting him. did you see who was waiting for it? " 18? "
A lot. And that's why it was not the time to say that Tiger's return was more important (or not) than Ben Hogan's return after an almost fatal accident, or that the Tiger Masters 2019 was better (or not) than the 1986 Jack Masters.
It was rather the moment to measure Woods, the man, compared to his young age. Tiger sent a lot of people to hell, especially his former wife, and could have hurt himself, or someone else, the night of his arrest with driving in a state of disrepair. Drunk in 2017. Woods said everyone survived what he called "really dark and dark moments".
It was so much easier to win the Masters to celebrate this time. Woods won his 15th major title, one more than his father was planning to reclaim at the time his son's amateur. Tiger heard his father's voice on a green Sunday.
"Just a punch on the picture," said Earl, and his son did what was said to him.
Before Tiger's kids were kicked out of the club in this black Mercedes at 16:16, the LaCava flag was loaded into another SUV that was likely waiting for Woods. Tiger would leave Augusta National with a memory and a memory that could last three lives.
Charlie and Sam have seen their drinks win, says Tiger, "just as my drinks have seen me win here." Woods' children and an entire generation of boys and girls discovered a Sunday they never really knew.
Eldrick Tiger Woods is not a flagship event of YouTube nor a video game superhero. He is a real golfer, the one we will never see again.
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