Tiger Woods is not one of us and never will be. He lives in a country where Jack Nicklaus owns the only other passport. But Woods is different now at 29. After enduring a streak of 10 winless majors, after a nasty split with an old coach, after the pleasant distractions of love and marriage, he has had enough failure on enough occasions to know how much it hurts to lose. And, with his father's declining health, he has lived with the constant possibility of an even greater loss.
Now, even in his greatest hours, like this evening at Augusta National when he captured his fourth Masters thanks to what may ultimately be regarded as the signature shot of his career, it seems frighteningly conceivable that Woods may fail on the final holes or that a challenger can somehow defeat him outright.
Woods's last four holes on this marathon 28-hole day that began at 8 a.m., captured the essence of this tense duality between his golf genius and his emerging adult vulnerability.
On the 16th hole, Woods holed an almost impossible chip, after a 20-foot side-hill break with the ball toppling into the hole after pausing for a second on the edge. "Somehow, an earthquake happened, and it fell in the hole," said Woods. Without that final tremble on the cup's edge, Chris DiMarco, not Woods, would be your new Masters champion.
Next, in the closest he has ever come to a major-title collapse, Woods bogeyed the 17th and 18th holes. Included in the mess were a drive into woods, a flubbed chip and an iron shot sprayed into a sand trap. Human, all too human. If DiMarco's chip shot at the 18th had fallen into the cup instead of lipping out, Woods would have been remembered for squandering a four-shot final-round lead.
"My chip on the 18th had every right to go in the hole," said DiMarco, accurately, not bitterly. "If mine had gone in and his had stayed out at the 16th, if those two are turned, it's the other way around."
Actually, if either shot had been reversed, it's the other way around.
Given that reprieve, Woods sank a 15-foot birdie on the first playoff hole to win. So, birdie, bogey, bogey, birdie on his last four holes at the Masters with everything at stake. That is Woods now, both sublime and yet slightly flawed. Perhaps that is why, with this ninth major win in hand, Tiger seems more appealing than ever.
As he accepted his green jacket, Woods showed the roaring throng more of his emotions than he has ever before revealed.
"My father hasn't been doing too well," Woods said. "It's been a tough year for him. He made the trek to Augusta, but he couldn't make it to the course. He's hanging in there. This is for dad."
Then, just as Nicklaus cried Saturday in his farewell to what he says will be his last Masters, Woods also began to leak about the eyes.
"I can't wait to get home," said Tiger, "and give him a big bear hug."
Afterward, Woods added of his father: "That's why this one meant so much. Give him a little more hope, a little more fire to keep on fighting."
And perhaps that helps explain why, on Thursday and Friday when he was 2 over par for 19 holes, Woods seemed close to losing self-control as the demons of the game played one trick after another on him. A fine shot hit the flag and went in a trap. A putt hung on the lip, but wouldn't fall. A bad putt trickled into Rae's Creek.
Recently, Woods's father has had cause to worry that he and his son's mutual quest — for Tiger to be the greatest golfer who ever lived — might be seriously off track. Now, after 34 barren months, at least by Woods family standards, the son has provided the answer. There will be more majors, and the lifetime project will continue.
After this magnificent triumph, Woods is exactly halfway to the peak of Mount Nicklaus with his 18 such titles. The rest of that exhilarating climb, which will presumably take many years, will almost certainly find more fans pulling for Woods passionately and personally, rather than marveling primarily at his talent, intelligence and tenacity.
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Woods's expressions over these long days, as well as the power of the diabolical game to trouble him deeply, make him a compelling protagonist, not just a polished, self-protective prodigy guarded by an impenetrable entourage.
Of course, another player once underwent a somewhat similar shift in public perception long ago — Nicklaus himself.
Of Fat Jack's early, Bunyanesque victories, Bobby Jones said, "Nicklaus plays a game with which I am not familiar." But with age, as well as the distractions of business and five children, plus the arrival of fresh challengers, the expressions in Nicklaus face also became more familiar to us. Call them golf character lines. Woods is starting to show them now.
That's why Woods's most sublime moments shine more brightly. They no longer feel like inevitabilities of youth and talent, but like victories extracted at great cost under fiendish pressure. Doubt, not much to be sure but just an iota, is now a 15th club in Woods's bag. In its way, that vulnerability makes his greatest moments, such as a record-tying seven straight birdies in a third-round 65 and his chip-in on the 70th hole that saved this title, even more delicious to behold.
Before, we watched Woods. Now, perhaps, we begin to share. And from this day the shared moment that will last is clear.
Ben Hogan is immortalized by his 1-iron shot at Merion Golf Club to win the 1950 U.S. Open. The perfect ball-striker stands in ideal balance, holding his finish as the ball streaks toward the stick. Nicklaus is epitomized by his birdie putt on the 17th hole to win his sixth Masters at age 46 in 1986. His face looks more like a wolf than a bear as his eyes devour the hole just before his ball falls into it, his ferocious willpower victorious again.
Now Woods, until he does something more preposterous for even higher stakes, has his comparable moment. Woods led by one shot at the 16th hole, but faced a brutal chip shot with his ball flush against the three-inch high second cut of rough. Woods studied every possibility and combed his voluminous knowledge of golf history.
Suddenly, he remembered a miraculous chip-in from a similar angle, but a much easier lie, by Davis Love III several years ago. Love aimed far left of the hole, got his chip shot to check on a ridge in the green, then got the ball to pause at precisely the perfect point and turn 90 degrees to the right, funneling itself slowly down a steep incline toward the hole. From Woods's lie, few would even attempt it. Stub it, skull it, fluff it, take your pick. But get the ball to stop in the perfect spot, then roll 30 feet sideways toward the hole?
Only Tiger. At his best. For his father. In the Masters. After a 34-mouth drought in the majors during which he and his new coach, Hank Haney, "were getting ripped for my swing changes." Not much pressure after 26 holes Saturday and 28 Sunday.
"If Chris makes birdie [from 15 feet] and I make bogey, I'm one back," Woods said. "I was just trying to throw the ball up there on the hill and let it feed down there and hopefully have a makable putt. All of a sudden, it looked pretty good, and all of a sudden it looked like really good, and it looked like how could it not go in, and how did it not go in, and all of a sudden it went in.
"So, it was pretty sweet."
Indeed, all around and in every way, how sweet it was.