Tiger Woods Has a Very Bad Day at the British Open

“It was a dream-come-true type day minus some of the golf,” Homa said. “It really felt like fantasy.”

Woods might have opted for nightmare, but he did sound content that he had managed to get healthy enough to play

“Very, very meaningful,” he said of his return to St. Andrews. Woods added, “This was always on the calendar to hopefully be well enough to play it. And I am. I just didn’t do a very good job of it.”

But Woods, even diminished at 46, still has the capacity to create goose bumps. You could see it and hear it all afternoon — and there was plenty of time to see and hear it — as he navigated the Old Course and fans lined up, often four rows deep behind the ropes with their cellphones held aloft to take pictures of him, even at a distance. Many of them were parents with children far too young to have watched Woods at his best. Some held up stuffed tigers.

“They were fantastic, absolutely fantastic,” Woods said of the gallery. “So supportive.”

But the poignant truth is that the Woods so many were roaring for was the Woods they remember not the Woods they were watching. For now, he is what he never wanted to be: a ceremonial golfer, a major star but no longer a major threat, walking the same fairways and greens but no longer making the same birdies and eagles.

As he made his way over the Swilcan Bridge and toward the 18th hole late on Thursday after a long and deflating day, a woman on a third-floor balcony overlooking the course summed up the mood and reality as she screamed from on high: “Tiger!!!!! 2000!!!! 2005!!!!!”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/14/sports/golf/tiger-woods-british-open.html