By Greg Cote, McClatchy Newspapers –
PALM BEACH GARDENS, Fla. — His last putt dropped, and 22-year-old Rory McIlroy rose like helium Sunday to No. 1 in the world golf rankings by winning the Honda Classic here, but he wasn’t the story of the day or what sent electricity buzzing across the PGA National Resort & Spa course.
(PHOTO: Tiger Woods celebrates an eagle at the 18th hole at the Honda Classic at PGA National Resort & Spa in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, on Sunday, March 4, 2012.)
The day verified that McIlroy is really good and getting better, but more than that the day flat-out proved this:
Tiger Woods remains the greatest star and most compelling player in golf . . . still.
He is bigger not winning, bigger almost winning, than whomever won. Still.
Sunday offered up something else. Entering this new year it felt more and more like wishful thinking, but after Sunday it feels like a simple fact:
Don’t count Tiger out yet. Don’t assume that Woods, now 36, won’t recover his full game and again be as good or better than anybody else.
Woods carded a final-round 62, his best finishing round ever, after a daring eagle on the par-5 18th hole vaulted him into a tie for second place.
Woods would lose to McIlroy by two shots but was within one with that eagle. Not that anybody ringing the 18th green knew that for sure, because the floating scoreboard had been toppled by howling morning wind and sank. Rain delayed Sunday’s start for two hours. Woods overcame the elements. He has overcome worse.
That towering 5-iron of his over water to a diabolically placed pin on the last green made the gallery roar a sonic boom. When the putt dropped, Woods gave his classic fist pump — a gesture not seen so much lately — and a “Ti-ger! Ti-ger!” chant bloomed.
Sometimes sports give you chills. This was such a moment.
“I heard the huge roar on 18 when Tiger made eagle,” McIlroy would say later. “I knew it wasn’t a birdie roar.”
Two eagles and four birdies would mark Woods’ Sunday scorecard and remind us that there is nothing quite like Tiger, charging. You needn’t see it to know it.
“It was just roars going up all over the course,” said fellow golfer Graeme McDowell, describing the sound. “Bombs going off all over.”
No player in golf and few in any sport have such aura and magnetic sway over fans, especially remarkable in this case considering Woods’ career has been a soap opera and a continuing more than completed comeback ever since he won the most recent of his 14 majors in ever-distant 2008.
Woods’ popularity when he was dominating, that was easy to understand.
His popularity now, that it endures, is more complicated and more interesting. The infidelity scandal that ruined his marriage and his manicured image and the extended career downturn have humanized Woods. Today, he is what he never was back in the dream-perfect years: an underdog. Somebody knocked down hard whom you cheer for to get back up.
“We love you, Tiger!” fans called out from around the final green.
“You still the man, Tiger!” they yelled.
He walked slowly along a 10-deep corridor of swooning fans held back by a rope, pausing to sign autographs, and it was a rock-star scene, with course marshals and local police jockeying to maintain control as the giant throng swayed in a tableau that was close to merry bedlam. But for the lack of sobbing preteens, it was like watching Justin Bieber try to walk through a mall.
(Woods left that scene to a private room, watching McIlroy finish up on one TV screen and the Heat-Lakers game on the other. He’s a Lakers fan. “Had the volume turned down on golf and up on the Laker game,” he said, smiling.)
The power of Tiger lives on. Sunday was a surge of that, and this is a player who needed that. Needed this.
Woods’ world ranking has plummeted from a seemingly perpetual No. 1 into the mortal 20s. He has won only one minor tournament since his most recent PGA Tour victory in September 2009. That, of course, was just before his world exploded.
A fixated media and his ardent fans never left Woods, but ultimately it will take him winning again, and winning more majors, too, to justify the faith. He believes he is close. That’s the thing about Woods. So much changed, but the self-confidence never abandoned him. His pride won’t allow it.
Woods was McIlroy’s inspiration to become a golf pro. This week the youthful star (whose girlfriend is tennis star Caroline Wozniacki) recalled his early impressions of Woods and said, “He was so … he gave out this aura where everything was so focused, you know, like, ‘I’m going to rip your head off on that first tee.’ “
That hasn’t changed. Tiger glides up a fairway with that perfect erect posture, glides with an aristocratic bearing. He demands that you watch him. Neither his concentration nor his confidences wavers.
Is catching and surpassing Jack Nicklaus’ record 18 majors still his mind-set?
“Absolutely,” he said. “Absolutely.”
Woods expects to regain his game, all of it, even at an age when most golfers show decline. Even after battling injuries, and changing caddies, and changing swing coaches, and tinkering with his game, and struggling with his putting.
For him, 2010 was swallowed by the aftermath of his scandal and 2011 by injuries. And now he is back. Or getting there.
“I started putting the pieces together. Everything is coming. I just need to keep progressing,” he said. “It’s going to turn. Each tournament it’s getting better. It’s just a matter of time before I put it all together.”
Sunday made all of that easier to believe.
As that eagle flew and the sound of that “Ti-ger!” chant echoed, this felt like a great career with some greatness left in it, not one ready yet for the past tense.
