There is at least one milestone Tiger Woods has yet to reach: turning 50 years old. But that will change. On Dec. 30, Woods will reach a half-century, an occasion we’re honoring here at GOLF.com with nine days of Tiger coverage that will not only pay tribute to his staggering career accomplishments, but also look forward to what may come next for a transformative player whose impact on the game can’t be measured simply in titles or big wins. In our latest Tiger @ 50 entry (below), senior writer Dylan Dethier revisits an unforgettable afternoon at Augusta National – which means something different now than it did then.
MORE TIGER @ 50 COVERAGE: How Much Does Tiger Really Cost to Golf? | Will Tiger make it on the PGA Tour Champions? | Why does the Tiger 2000 bag still feel untouchable? | Explaining Tiger’s famous “gate drill”. | Tiger stats you’ve never heard
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I still remember the look on his face.
I have had the thrill of watching Tiger Woods hit thousands of golf shots during my time at GOLF, some from my couch but many more up close. But one in particular sticks out in my mind.
I remember because it was the 16th hole at Augusta National on Masters Sunday, a time and place where Woods has made a habit of working magic.
I remember because this was 2020 and because the year before, on the same hole, Woods had stuck his tee within two feet and only squeezed the green, the most improbable and improbable of his 15 major championships.
I remember because this time his shot ended up within two feet, too, in a different hole location, but with the same score. The ball hit a small patch of turf as it bounced forward and stuck. Beautiful 2.
I remember because I had never seen such a look, not even from Woods, of intimidating intensity but somehow crossed with indifference, as every fiber of his being needed him to flag that shot, but he got zero joy out of it.
I remember because literally three people clapped for the shot and I was one of them. (Media types don’t generally applaud much, but in this case it felt like someone should.) This was November’s Masters, after all, the Masters of the Covid era, with no fans and the limited VIPs in attendance clustered around the final pairings, including eventual winner Dustin Johnson, but I had a non-champion pairing, so I was free to follow the story. something interesting happened on his way home.
I remember it because of what Woods did on the 12th hole about 45 minutes agofinding the short water and then the short water again and then the long bunker and then the short water again and walking away with a septuple-bogey 10, the first double-digit score of his PGA Tour career.
I remember it because of what he did on the following holes, clinical golf en route to birdies on 13 and 15. In 2019 he birdied 13, 15 and 16 to open a two-shot lead on the Masters field; in 2020, he was 13th, 15th and 16th only to make a belated and pointless climb up the final round leaderboard. (It was also a reminder that nothing is meaningless.)
I remember it because it was so quiet you could hear the ball land, so quiet you could hear the CBS producer on the ground relaying the next player’s club choice up to the tower.
“Scottie Scheffler: 7-iron.”
I remember it because Scheffler talks about that round as a source of inspiration; it was his first time playing the Masters and it was his first time playing Woods and while he had seen his childhood idol at his absolute lowest, he was now also seeing his superpower up close.
“I kid you not, he hit to this day the best three iron shots I’ve ever seen hit on those last few holes. It was just incredible to watch,” Scheffler said earlier this year. “He puts everything he’s got into every shot he hits on the golf course, which I think is a really underrated skill here. … There wasn’t a moment in that round where he didn’t give it a thousand percent, which is a lot easier said than done.”
I remember it because it was Shane Lowry’s first time playing with Woods, too, and because he echoes Scheffler’s sentiment that it was “one of the best lessons I’ve ever had.”
“He’s the greatest golfer who ever lived, he has no chance to win the Masters, he makes a 10 on a par-3 and he tries his nuts for the next six holes,” Lowry said. later.
I remember because of the blurry disposable camera photos I have of the moment; mostly the entire golf course was so quiet that I didn’t want to break the silence with a big plastic click, but once Woods was on the 17th tee, it felt like a moment worth capturing—even if my thumb got in the frame.
I remember it because of what Woods did on the last two holes, too: He hit an iron shot and hit a perfectly weighted birdie putt that rolled over the rim and into the cup, capping his best single-round finish in his storied Masters career.
I remember it because it felt like such an anticlimactic wait from the 18th green; Woods, the defending Masters champion and perhaps the greatest of all time, birdied his fifth shot in six holes but walked off the green with little applause and a top-40 finish.
I remember because more and more it seemed to me that this was the end.
I don’t want to be dramatic. Woods has been making new memories in professional golf ever since. He has made inspiring charges on the cut lines, especially at Augusta National AND in Tulsaalso. He has played in old places, like St. Andrewsand new as SoFi Center. But that week in November 2020 was the last time Woods played a major golf tournament you thought he might actually win.
There was no way of knowing that at the time, of course. While Woods’ post-round press availability included an admission of how difficult it all had become — “No matter how hard I try, things just don’t work like they used to, and no matter how much I push and ask this body, it just doesn’t work sometimes,” he said — the next Masters was just five months away, and he was preparing for it.
At that point, Woods still seemed to have a competitive future. It’s easy to forget how good he still was entering 2020, after all. He had won the 2019 Masters and the 2019 Zozo Championship, and even playing a limited schedule he was ranked No. 6 in the world at the end of the year. Next, we saw Woods compete in his first start of 2020, at Torrey Pines, where he finished T9.
The rest of his 2020 wasn’t very good; Covid hit, and that coincided with Woods’ body not fully cooperating, he missed most of the not-so-great schedule, and there was something about the generational fan favorite showing up on tour without fans, anyway. But somehow November’s Masters marked a chance to reset, with the promise of a return to normalcy in the new year. Maybe that flurry of five birdies to go had the potential to start some offseason momentum.
This never happened. Woods underwent a fifth back surgery in January 2021. And in February came his horrific car crash in suburban Los Angeles. It was a miracle in which he was walking all of them in the years since, it doesn’t matter if you play competitive golf. But that incident separated a Woods era from the one that followed.
Woods turns 50 on December 30, 2025. He has as many layers now as he ever had, even if they are different in composition. He underwent another back surgery in September; in his Bahamas press conference any plans to play in the future felt like an afterthought.
I vowed in 2019 to never count Woods out, and I have no plans to start now. When I think about the end of his career, it still seems like a future, hazy date; The opening of 2033 in St. Andrews, maybe, or the 2040 Masters, and who knows what miracles he’ll do now and then? However, in the last half-decade Woods hasn’t bettered that strange, inspiring T38 at November’s Masters, the last greatness before everything changed. I might wish we’d gotten to see more of that version of Woods, who was working on his off-speed pitches, but there were still plenty of pin-seeking rackets in his arsenal. But that ignores reality. It ignores the fact that we have already seen the end of something special.
However, as for the ending? You could do a lot worse than that shot, and that look and the meaning behind it.
Dylan Dethier welcomes your comments at dylan_dethier@golf.com.
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