Tiger Woods will turn 44 later this month. For 42 of those years, he has been in the public consciousness to one degree or another.
We knew him first as a 2-year-old golf prodigy, then as a teenager who won an unprecedented six consecutive amateur national championships, and then as a transformative figure who dominated the professional game. Over the past decade, we’ve watched him deal with a sordid personal scandal and chronic back pain, only to see him reemerge triumphantly and win the Masters earlier this year.
This month, Woods will be playing a new and unlikely role: golf’s elder statesman. For the first time, Woods will captain a U.S. team in an international competition, at this year’s Presidents Cup at Australia’s Royal Melbourne Golf Club, from Dec. 12-15.
The Presidents Cup is the PGA Tour’s attempt to replicate the biennial excitement of the Ryder Cup competition between the United States and Europe. Like many sequels, the Presidents Cup — which pits the U.S. against the world’s best non-European players — has struggled to find a rationale beyond providing more content for the Tour’s TV partners.
The tournament has been consistently noncompetitive, with the U.S. winning 10 of the 12 matches since its debut in 1994. The event’s most noteworthy moment came in 2003, when Woods and South Africa’s Ernie Els were selected to play an impromptu playoff, the drama of which was quickly aborted when the teams decided that, doggone it, it was getting dark and they’d hate to see either team lose, so let’s just shake hands and call it a draw. Sometimes golf takes its “gentlemen’s sport” mantra a bit too far.
Nevertheless, this week’s competition at Royal Melbourne has compelling storylines. Woods, as always, will be the central figure. Earlier in his career, he sometimes seemed ambivalent about team matches, suggesting, quite reasonably, that his legacy would be defined instead by major championships. But with age, he has embraced team play, serving as the Americans’ vice captain at the 2016 Ryder Cup and the 2017 Presidents Cup, when back problems prevented him from playing.
Now, as Tiger explained at a press conference last December, “There’s really nothing better as a player (than) to evolve into the role of being a captain.”
For Woods, leading the Presidents Cup team in Australia should be a good rehearsal for the time when he is picked to captain the Ryder Cup team. That might happen as soon as 2024, when the Ryder Cup will be played at Bethpage Black in Farmingdale, New York. Woods and Phil Mickelson, two favorites of Big Apple fans, figure to be the top candidates for that captaincy.
It will be fascinating to see how the youngest members of Woods’ Presidents Cup squad respond to playing for their sporting hero. As Tony Finau, one of Woods’ four captain’s picks, said, “To have that call come from my golfing idol, I mean this is a guy I grew up trying to emulate as a golfer, it was pretty cool for me.”
Woods tapped himself for one of those captain’s picks — not a reach, given that he has risen to No. 7 in the Official World Golf Ranking. He’ll be the first U.S. playing captain since Hale Irwin in 1994, at the inaugural Presidents Cup.
Woods will arrive in good form. In his lone fall start, in October, he won Japan’s Zozo Championship by three shots, tying the PGA Tour record with 82 career victories. But his fragile body remains a constant question mark. In August, Woods had arthroscopic surgery on his left knee, his fifth operation on that knee. Woods said the knee was affecting how he walked and even his ability to read putts. That was reflected in his season. After his Masters victory, Woods played only six PGA Tour events for the rest of the year, missing the cut in two and withdrawing from a third.
“I’m excited about having this end-of-year run where I’m feeling much more fit, and I don’t have the achiness that I’ve been dealing with for the last couple years,” Woods told reporters after the tournament in Japan.
Still, he’s been noncommittal about how much he’ll play in Melbourne. He’s hinted that he might play only two matches over the four-day tournament, focusing more on his coaching duties. For Woods, who used to be golf’s lone wolf, rarely fraternizing with other players, what’s striking is the connections he has formed with the young stars he is taking to Australia.
“Being a part of these teams … these are experiences that they’ll have for a lifetime and they’ll cherish,” he said. “And the bonding that happens is truly amazing and great to be a part of.”
Martin Kaufmann has covered sports for more than two decades, including 16 years as a senior editor at Golfweek.
