Chapter 82

Jupiter Island, Florida

April 5, 2020

It’s the Sunday before the 2020 Masters in Augusta. At least it’s supposed to be.

From his home on Jupiter Island, Tiger calls his friend Justin Thomas, a twenty-six-year-old fellow PGA Tour member and the 2017 PGA Championship winner. Thomas lives nearby, in mainland Jupiter, but with COVID-19 lockdowns, everyone is staying home.

The defending Masters champion would normally be in Augusta, Georgia, as he has been every April for the last twenty-five years. But with the PGA schedule in flux, so are Tiger’s feelings, which he describes to Thomas as “energetic” and “wired” on the high end and “irritable” on the low end. Tiger’s struggling to “unwire those circuits,” which are firing an urgent message: “Subconsciously I knew I was supposed to get up there. My body was ready to go.”

The tournament’s been rescheduled for November 12–15, the first major move in a PGA season upended by the coronavirus pandemic. Only World War II, which suspended Masters play between 1942 and 1946, has had as big an impact.

On a February 25 pre-Masters conference call, Tiger had answered an ever-popular media question: What’s on the menu for the Champions’ Dinner? His plan for 2020 was to go retro. “I’m going back to what I had in 2006,” he’d said. “Being born and raised in SoCal, having fajitas and sushi was part of my entire childhood,” Tiger explained. “So we’ll have steak and chicken fajitas, and we’ll have sushi and sashimi out on the deck, and I hope the guys will enjoy it.”

For dessert, another throwback, this one to the first Champions’ Dinner he’d hosted: “I’m debating whether or not to have milkshakes as desserts because that was one of the most great memories to see Gene Sarazen and Sam Snead having milkshakes that night in ’98.”

But on Tuesday, April 7, instead of hosting a dinner at the Augusta National clubhouse for the fifth time, Tiger—sporting a quarantine beard—dons his Green Jacket over a red Nike shirt, sets out his Masters trophy as a centerpiece, and gathers with Sam, Charlie, Erica, and the family dogs (Bugs and Lola, a border collie and a springer spaniel mix) at their Jupiter Island dinner table to enjoy the planned SoCal menu.

He tweets out a photo captioned: Masters Champions Dinner quarantine style. Nothing better than being with family.

After the meal, the evening ends in a family food fight, Tiger tells NBC Sports, though he assures them, “I did take the jacket off.”

Tiger and Charlie, who’s working on his game, hit the backyard practice area and putting green. Bugs and Lola fetch stray golf balls the way Boom-Boom used to do when young Tiger was practicing on the Navy Golf Course.

Tiger tries not to offer golf advice unless Charlie asks. “My job is to get them prepared for life, not sports,” he says, echoing sentiments shared by both his parents. But he follows in Earl’s footsteps as a parent more than in Tida’s. “My mom’s tough. Very, very tough. Very vocal” is Tiger’s description. “My dad was more cerebral, and liked to plant seeds that wouldn’t germinate for years—but then it was like, ‘Oh yeah.’ That’s what I like to do.”

He thinks Earl would approve of him nowadays. “Pops would be proud,” he says. “I mean, he’d say, ‘Yeah, you—you’ve made your share of mistakes. We all do. And you bounce back, learn from ’em.’

“And, you know, that’s what I’ve done,” Tiger says. “I’ve done a lot of meditation, a lot of thinking, a lot of analyzing,” adding, “And here we are, come full circle.”

Family time isn’t the only benefit to emerge from the pandemic pause. “I feel a lot better now than I did then,” Tiger says in an interview with Discovery. “I’ve been able to turn a negative into a positive and been able to train a lot and get my body back to where I think it should be.”

On Sunday, May 24, Tiger is seen holding an oversize check for $20 million. He’s one of four headliners in The Match: Champions for Charity golf tournament, held to raise money for coronavirus relief. At Tiger’s home course, the Medalist Golf Club, in Hobe Sound, Florida, Tiger and Peyton Manning defeat Phil Mickelson and Tom Brady, the new quarterback for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

Tiger hasn’t played since February 16, but any bitterness over that last-place finish at Riviera Country Club, in Los Angeles, is overcome by today’s good work for an important cause—and some classic trash talk.

On the 5th hole, three-time U.S. Open champion Tiger landed a zinger on the six-time runner-up, Mickelson. “You want me to mark with a U.S. Open medal?” Tiger asked.

“Do you have one? I have some silver ones,” Mickelson answered.

Yet neither makes the cut at the 120th U.S. Open, rescheduled from June to September of 2020 at Winged Foot Golf Club, in Mamaroneck, New York.

Twenty-seven-year-old Bryson DeChambeau wins his first major at 6 under. The Southern California golfer and college physics major name-checks Tiger in his victory speech as the motivation behind his strength-training regimen.

“Tiger inspired this whole generation to do this, and we’re going to keep going after it. I don’t think it’s going to stop.”

Tiger returns to Augusta National to defend the title he’s held for nineteen months, thanks to the delayed 2020 schedule. Thoughts of his 2019 victory have never left him. “I’m getting chills just thinking about it,” he says on Tuesday, November 10, as he hosts the Champions’ Dinner—minus the milkshakes he’d originally considered for dessert.

On Saturday, November 14, his alarm wakes him at 3:30 a.m. A first-round weather delay that stretched into Friday has him playing twenty-six holes today. It’s a twelve-hour session, a supreme test for a back that’s vulnerable to stress. And pain.

The next day, Tiger’s wearing his Sunday red, but his body doesn’t have what it takes to deliver the green. After what has to be an embarrassing septuple bogey, with three shots in the water (and a bit of bad luck on the first two, which roll back off the green), Tiger birdies 13, pars 14, then birdies 15, 16, 17, and 18 for a final-round score of 76. “You’ve got five green jackets and you made a 10 on the 12th hole. You got it all covered,” Tiger’s caddie, Joe LaCava, says in consolation. In a stark contrast to last year’s mobbed victory celebration, Covid restrictions mean only a few spectators are waiting on the 18th green to watch him tap in—in thirty-eighth place.

“I hit a few too many shots than I wanted to today, and I will not have the chairman be putting the green jacket on me,” Tiger says. “I’ll be passing it on.”

There’s ample time for reflection. More than a full hour passes before Tiger’s called upon to put the Green Jacket on the 2016 U.S. Open winner and first-time Masters champion, Dustin Johnson. With an unmatched 20-under score of 268, the thirty-six-year-old Johnson broke the record Tiger set in 1997 by two strokes.

Though earning the Green Jacket is more important than who passes it along, “having Tiger put it on was awesome,” Johnson says of Augusta National’s most coveted prize. “It’s an incredible feeling. Dreaming about winning the Masters as a kid and having Tiger put the green jacket on you; it still feels like a dream.

“You wouldn’t want it any other way.”

The tournament formerly known as the Father/Son Challenge has a new name and two players new to the twenty-team field, Tiger and eleven-year-old Charlie—the youngest (by a year) to compete in the tournament since it began, in 1997.

Walking with Team Tiger at the Ritz-Carlton Golf Club in Orlando, Florida, during the weekend before Christmas are thirteen-year-old Sam and her mother, Elin. It’s the first time Elin has been seen at an event with her ex-spouse since their 2010 divorce.

Justin Thomas—who’s won three PGA events this year—and his father, Mike, win the PNC Championship, with Team Singh (Vijay and Qass) taking second and Team O’Meara (Mark and Shaun) third.

“This is a big stage, to bring Charlie out at 11 it could be a little intimidating, but we witnessed something really special in the way they played,” Mark O’Meara says.

“I’m trying to make sure Charlie is in the right environment,” Tiger says, “so he can practice and play” rather than worry about the publicity that comes with having a famous parent. “Making sure he’s able to have fun just playing the game of golf.”

Charlie more than holds his own, hitting every fairway in the first round. Youngest competitor in the field, the PGA Tour tweets. Biggest trash-talker.

“Draw hole” reads the note Justin finds in the sand after he bunkered his ball on the 13th.

It’s from Charlie.

Team Tiger finishes in seventh place. Tiger’s been known to get emotional when a win eludes him. Today the source of his feelings is different.

“I don’t think words can describe it,” he says. “Just the fact that we were able to have this experience together, Charlie and I, they are memories for a lifetime.”

It’s an intersection of the past and the future.

“I know my dad would have been proud with how Sam and Charlie turned out, I just wished he could have been here for all of this,” Tiger says. “My mom has been, she’s been a part of their lives, I wish my dad would have been.”