1 line from Tiger Woods’ presser refers to a painful year in golf

There were plenty of good vibes from Tiger Woods’ reappearance on Tuesday in the Bahamas, his annual State of the Tiger conference ahead of this week’s Hero World Challenge. Woods is not playing this year but seemed to be at peace with that, instead reprising his role as the smiling tournament host. These days, Woods is more in tune with the media and vice versa, each for a better understanding of what to expect from the other. As expected, the back-and-back of the day failed to find any of the five horror stories. In some ways that was the biggest takeaway. But one line was hard to hear without wincing.

Woods was asked about a prediction he made last year in this chair, when he announced his intentions to play once a month in 2024. It seemed ambitious but exciting at the time, a measure of hope from the greatest player of all time. of his generation. But it didn’t turn out that way. 2024 Woods started with a mysterious WD at the Genesis Invitational, culminated with yet another cut at the Masters and then disappointing MCs at the PGA, US Open and Open Championship. We didn’t hear much about him after that, just news of another successful back surgery – his sixth. So what happened?

“Well, I didn’t think my back was going to go the way it did this year,” Woods said.

He described the pain that persisted throughout the season, the way it shined in his leg, and how it stopped responding to treatment and recovery. He said he can committed to one competition a month again, but he said to stop.

“I really don’t know.”

Now comes the hard part. Preparation mode for 2025, a promising year for TGL and an unknown number of stroke play golf tournaments. But in 2024?

“This year was kind of — I had to throw it away,” she said. “I wasn’t as sharp as I needed to be. I didn’t play the way I needed to for the big tournaments and I didn’t play well in them. I hope that next year will be better, I will be physically stronger and better. I know this process has helped and I hope I can build on that.”

I had to throw it away. It hurts to see someone else’s pain. It’s even harder to see what pain does to an athlete – how the body can betray the mind and spirit. It’s painful to watch Woods in particular, who has pushed his body, his mind again The spirit has passed the limit for decades, and is now fighting Father Time for good measure.

Woods’ words were poignant even in the context of his other career as a figurehead in the PGA Tour’s geopolitical debates — his lost year on the course felt emblematic of a lost year in professional golf’s chaotic, often disappointing landscape.

This December marks the first deadline for an agreement between the PGA Tour, DP World Tour and the Saudi Public Investment Fund. It looks like we’ll blow past that one-year mark without a deal; Woods’ latest update on that case was a mix between some cautious optimism (“it’s definitely moving”) and a big shrug (“Even if we got a deal done now, it’s in the hands of the DOJ, but we wish there was something tangible”).

Throughout the game, it was never a lost year – think Scottie Scheffler’s dominance, Xander Schauffele’s confirmation, Bryson DeChambeau’s heroics at the US Open. But inside sports, the “high-level discussions” between the parties start to feel inconsistent. We haven’t seen progress in a satisfactory top-flight decision, no closer to peace or harmony, and we’ve reached December, once again, looking down on a new season of LIV signing rumors and unrevised eye contact.

This week the Warrior, we may not find comfort. But with Woods, we can at least get the gist. This year marks the 25th edition of the World Challenge, an event Woods first hosted in 1999 to benefit his foundation. Woods turns 49 later this month, meaning he has held the event for more than half his life.

Especially that seems surreal. Tiger was 24 in his first year as tournament host, and it’s hard to imagine Ludwig Aberg (who turned 25 last month) or Akshay Bhatia (who will turn 23 next month) hosting the invitational or getting world champions to attend. But the event’s 25th anniversary is a reminder that the challenges facing pro golf in 2024 haven’t changed much since 1999.

Woods was already the greatest player in golf at the time. He entered the 1999 World Challenge on the back of four PGA Tour victories in a row, would start 2000 with two more and, later that year, would claim the first three legs of the Tiger Slam. But it wasn’t all sunshine and roses; Woods and agent Mark Steinberg had their own problems with the PGA Tour. They did not enjoy the huge rights penalty the Tour imposed on their tournament, which increased four times from 1999 to 2000. They also disapproved of advertisements used by tournament sponsors that featured Woods’ likeness. (Mercedes featured Woods’ face in tournament advertising while Buick paid Woods directly for the same privilege.) Tiger and commissioner Tim Finchem had a frosty relationship, and there was some concern that Woods might look to play his golf elsewhere.

“The players and the PGA Tour have been butting heads on a lot of issues,” Woods said in 2000. “The public doesn’t know we do it, but we do it all the time.” Asked about speculation that he might leave the PGA Tour, the New York Times he described his reaction this way: “Woods nodded, smiled and shrugged his shoulders.”

His father the Earl fueled the speculation.

“He can take his game to Europe, Africa, Asia or wherever he wants,” said Earl. The Associated Press, “and the world will follow.”

Unlike today, when the physical threat of travel can spread its advertising on the PGA Tour website, the conversation then it could have been just a conversation and it was powerful. Woods and the PGA Tour were better off in shared company. But Woods’ upset was a reminder of the constant tug-of-war between players and institutions — a push-pull echoed by the arrival of LIV, through Policy Board discussions, through changes in field sizes and tour sizes and equity payments and media rights. And with talk about players being paid to play in the Ryder Cup, the issue resurfaced in the Tiger press on Tuesday.

“If we go back to my playing days, we had the same conversation in 1999 and we didn’t want to be paid, we wanted to give more money to charity, the media threw us and said we wanted to profit. paid,” Woods recalled Tuesday. “The Ryder Cup itself makes so much money, why can’t we allocate it to different charities? And what’s wrong with each player, 12 players getting a million dollars and the ability to go public with the amazing charities they’re involved in that they can help?”

The last reference to 1999 came in reference to Woods’ changes during that time, and here he made an attempt to set the record straight. Of late Earl has been painted as Woods’ swing coach, but after his early golf days that was not the case.

“Dad turned all the keys in the game of golf, that wasn’t his thing,” Woods said. “Dad had a lot of understanding of the mental side of it from his days in the Special Forces and the mindset it took to do what he had to do, but as far as the mechanics of golf, no.”

In 1999, Woods underwent a controversial transformation under the watchful eye of Butch Harmon. Things started getting worse, then they got better.

“We started working on slowly putting the pieces of the golf game together and it took the best part of a year and a half or so to get it where I thought it was where I wanted it to be. “I had a good run in ’99, 2000, 2001,” Woods said in a casual, satisfied tone.

Players are assigned to tour then, right now. They fight for more money, more control, a bigger piece of the pie. They threatened to look elsewhere. Mostly they stay. They fight hard fields and their berries, and they fix both and try to make them better. Meanwhile, Woods does all of those things better than most of his peers. Almost all of them get stronger over time.

On Tuesday, Woods didn’t just look back, though. This is the 10th year of Hero’s sponsorship of the World Challenge, and although Hero’s chief executive Dr. Pawan Munjal admitting uncertainty — “There is confusion among sponsors right now, what to do, where to go, how to look for the future,” — he also announced the extension of the sponsorship until 2030. Woods will turn 55 that December. It is difficult to predict the status of LIV Golf, the PGA Tour or their potential intersection. And it’s hard to know if Woods will be completely out of competitive golf by then — or if he’ll be putting together a sponsor’s invitation that week after winning the Masters and running a limited schedule on the PGA. Touring champions.

Woods spoke about the athlete’s journey and the role of recovery, perseverance and frustration. His body is not as healthy as before, he said. Still, he remembers and hopes. Which brings us to another line of his, which has been said by athletes and sports fans for as long as there have been seasons.

I hope next year will be better.