You’ll find all sorts of characters hanging around the foot of the Open leaderboard. There’s Denwit Boriboonsub, a 20-year-old Thai who qualified by shooting 28 on the back nine of the Malaysian Open. Altin van der Merwe, a South African amateur who just quit his job as a waiter to focus on golf. Wyndham Clark, whose only top-30 finish in a major was last year’s U.S. Open. And 58-year-old Todd Hamilton, who won his only major here at Royal Troon 20 years ago and still bowls every summer to make the most of the exemption he earned.
Oh, and there’s also a guy named Eldrick Woods, or “Tiger” to those who know him. Woods followed up his first-round 79 with a second-round 77 for a 36-hole total of 156. That put him 14 strokes over par, well outside the projected cut line. It was the worst week he’s ever had at an Open, and if not for a three-foot final putt on the 18th, it would have been the worst 36-hole score he’s ever had at a major championship. As it stands, it’s tied with the 80-76 he posted at the 2015 U.S. Open at Chambers Bay.
Woods has reached the point where he will never play in the Open again without having to endure speculation that it will be his last. People have been trying to write him off ever since he walked over the Swilcan Bridge during the second round at St Andrew’s in the 150th Championship a few years ago. After limping off the course at Troon, he was asked again if he would be in the field next year at Royal Portrush. “Yes,” Woods said without hesitation, “definitely.”
His assessment of the way he played was similarly blunt. “It wasn’t very good,” he said. “I fought it all day. I never really hit it close enough to make birdies, so I made a lot of bogeys.” Five in all, plus a double on the par-four 2nd where he chipped 10 yards past the pin and off the far side of the green.
It could have been worse. He was lucky to make par on the 8th after his tee shot hit a sprinkler head that rolled over the bank into a bunker on the right side of the green.
One of his best golf games was the way he wrestled himself out of the worst of the pits on two of the longer holes. On the 6th hole he hit his ball out of the rough on the right and then into the gallery on the left. He somehow managed to get away with a birdie (his only of the round) after making a putt from 21ft. On the 16th hole he made a remarkable par with a putt from 13ft, even though he had landed his first shot in the burn and hit his third into the stands.
The problem was that they were the only two putts he made all day, from any distance. You used to be able to find him on the course by listening for the roar. Now you can follow him by sighing and grinning.
You wouldn’t necessarily have guessed it to see him limping and grimacing on the links, but Woods insisted he had a great time there. “I loved it, I’ve always loved playing big championships. I just wish I was sharper physically. It tests you mentally, physically and emotionally, of course, and I just wasn’t as sharp as I should have been. I was hoping to find it somehow, but I never did.”
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Woods’ ambition this year was “to make sure I play all the major championships,” which he did, despite missing the cut in three of them and finishing 60th in the other. He insists he’s making progress despite everything. “I’ve gotten better physically, even though my results didn’t really show it, so I just have to keep going and eventually play more competitively and get back into the competitive flow.” That won’t happen anytime soon. He doesn’t plan to play competitively again until December.
But if he believes it, then it doesn’t really matter what anyone else thinks. Woods’ legacy is his to do with as he pleases. Even apart from the fact that he’s exempt, Woods has long since earned the right to play as long as he wants. The man made the game what it is today, and why so many other people in the game seem to be in such a hurry to send him into retirement is a bit of a mystery.
He is still one of the biggest crowd pullers in the field, drawing crowds of five or six, even though it seems like they’ve only come to say they got a glimpse of who he used to be.