The 1997 Masters by Tiger Woods

Author:Tiger Woods
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography / Sports, Sports & Recreation / Golf
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2017-03-19T16:00:00+00:00

And then there was Arnold. He was sixty-seven and was playing his forty-third straight Masters, having won in 1958, 1960, 1962, and 1964. Arnold had been diagnosed with prostate cancer the previous January and had surgery five days later. The first question he asked his doctor was when he could start playing again, and he was told six weeks. Arnold made a quick calculation and realized that would give him time to prepare for the Masters. If it was at all possible for him to be at Augusta and to play there, you knew he would show up. I was in the locker room with him during one Masters when he was in his seventies, and we started talking about the round ahead of us as we put on our shoes. Conditions were firm, and so we figured it would be a good day because we could both get our drives down the fairways farther. We were talking strategy and kidding around. When I told him he should be able to break 80, he gave me a big “F.U.” It was so much fun being with him there, going at one another.

On Friday he was in the first twosome, at 8:20 with Ken Green. I was in the second-to-last twosome with Paul. We had started at 2:39, and so I was getting ready for my round when Arnold came up the eighteenth fairway. He was tired, and he was on his way to shooting 89 to follow his first-round 87. He was given one standing ovation after another during his second round, and the one around the eighteenth green as he approached it and finished his round was loud and prolonged. Arnold and Augusta had been going together for years, and prostate cancer wasn’t going to stop him. Arnold said his scores embarrassed him, and that he hadn’t thought his compromised health would affect him as much as it did. His scores didn’t matter to Arnie’s Army.

A few years later, in 2004, Arnold, who was then seventy-four, played his fiftieth and last Masters. Five years after that, in 2009, Gary Player, then seventy-three, played his fifty-second and last Masters. What other sport can somebody play for half a century?

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