It’s Monday and it’s the morning after the night before.  The rest of my colleagues from WestwoodOne radio have departed and I have a little bit of time to draw breath and reflect as I wait in our rental house for my lift to Atlanta airport.  I’ve switched off the television and the endless post game shows the Americans like so much and, silence really IS golden, especially when you’ve spent the last four days with headphones clamped to your head and a dozen voices ringing in your ears all day long.

What, oh what have we just witnessed?  At its simplest, we’ve seen Tiger Woods win his fifth green jacket, his 15th major and a whole lot of cash.  Did I think I’d ever see Tiger win again after the trials and tribulations (mostly self-inflicted) of the past decade?  No, I didn’t.  Did I WANT him to win again?  Frankly, no, not particularly.  I had too often witnessed him being arrogant and rude, acting with a huge degree of entitlement and scant regard for others.  While his golf has always been mesmerising and a privilege to watch, especially in his prime, it has been hard to warm to the man himself.

Life, however, has a way of knocking the corners off us all and that is certainly true of Tiger Woods.  Two years ago he needed a nerve blocker just to make it to the traditional Tuesday Champions’ Dinner and he confided to a few that evening that he felt he might never play golf again.  He left that dinner, boarded a flight to London and visited a Harley Street surgeon who convinced him that all might not be totally lost. There was one more surgery to try.  Fast forward twelve months and Tiger was back at Augusta, but this time he was travelling with his clubs.

There were so many unknowns.  How would his body hold up?  Could he ever be competitive again and in a major at that?  The answers at the end of that week were cautiously positive.  He finished in a tie for 32nd but the good news was he was getting stronger physically and ready to see if he could get a full season of playing under his belt.  All through 2018 he was like a man setting out to walk across a frozen river, testing to see if the ice would hold his weight. The further he got into the season the more confident he became. The ice was holding!

The walk, then the golf, became more assured and by the time he had finished 6th in the Open, was runner-up in the PGA and had won the Tour Championship most of his questions had been answered, emphatically.  His dismal and exhausted Ryder Cup performance in Paris, however, served as a reminder to him that future scheduling would be key.

So, back to Augusta twelve months later and only one of that raft of unanswered questions was remaining – would he ever win another major, the yardstick by which he, and therefore we, measure greatness in the game?

Now we all know the answer to that.

So, normal service resumed, you might say?  Actually, no.  Did you see the players waiting to congratulate him at the entrance to the recording area?  Bubba, Brooks Koepka,  Rickie Fowler, Xander Schauffele, Ian Poulter and Bernhard Langer amongst others?  That welcome committee from his peers had been absent at his previous 14 major triumphs and is a huge clue as to how his interaction with his rival competitors has altered.  Indeed, he paid tribute recently to the young American players for inspiring him to get out there and get playing again.

It’s a very neat circle as Tiger was the one who originally inspired them as children to think that golf would be a really cool thing to try.  It was also the first time his own two children, Sam and Charlie, had had an opportunity to see their father do what he used to do routinely.  This may well be the major Tiger savours most – for lots of reasons.

I was there in Augusta in 1997 when Tiger won his first major and I was there at his 14th win in Torrey Pines when he won playing on a broken leg.  I was also there at loads of the ones in between.  I didn’t expect there to be a 15th and I didn’t expect to be pleased for him, yet I am.  The golfer is familiar but the man I see behind the golfer is different and for that I’m glad.

I travelled to Georgia hoping to see an historic Masters, having in mind a Rory win which would make him the sixth member of that oh-so-exclusive club of players to complete the career grand slam.  That wasn’t to be and it was a different narrative that was rolled out this second week in April.

No matter, I can wait another twelve months – or as long as it takes – for Rory’s undoubted destiny because this week was special…..very, very special.

Well, that old saw “all things in moderation” didn’t get much of a look-in at Augusta this year, did it?  Certainly not on the Sunday when it was all hands to the pumps to avoid the apocalypse that the weather people had predicted – and which skirted the property but hit elsewhere with devastating effect.  Instead of the mother of all storms we had a rip-roaring godmother of a Masters, a tournament of the ages for all ages.

The early two-tee start seemed sacrilegious – and such a break with tradition at such a place was a sure sign that this wasn’t just any old weather warning – but the scrunched-up schedule added to the drama and sense of excitement.  A host of players jostled up and down the leaderboard, more than a few of them genuine title contenders on the day that someone’s dream of winning a green jacket becomes a reality.

Even I, cynical and hard of heart, couldn’t begrudge Tiger the sweetest victory of his star-studded career.  Never mind his shot-making and touch, the man’s concentration and control were immense, impervious and made him indomitable.   It was no wonder that, the last putt holed, the prize secured, he screamed, flapped his arms, hopped a bit, screamed again, hugged everyone, shook hands, then screamed some more and flapped again.  He didn’t know what to do with himself.  He’d given everything and the release of tension, all those years of pain, humiliation, frustration, everything, exploded in one ecstatic volcanic eruption.  A man overjoyed and overcome.

“We did it,” he said as he gave his caddie Joe LaCava a crushing bearhug.  “You did it,” LaCava said.

But Tiger was right, he couldn’t have done it alone.  This was a team effort, a victory achieved through blood, sweat and tears, with the love and support of family and friends.  No wonder their beaming smiles lit up an amazing Augusta afternoon.

 

It may not match the goings-on in Georgia but there’ll be no shortage of emotion at Gleneagles in September (13-15) when Europe attempt to wrest the Solheim Cup back from the United States.  The Europeans, perennial biennial underdogs, have never lost in Scotland, with epic wins at Dalmahoy (in 1992) and Loch Lomond (2000), so it’s as well that captain Catriona Matthew, from North Berwick, has always remained cool and calm under pressure.

The other week, Catriona was in Selkirk for the launch of a Solheim Cup tartan, commissioned by VisitScotland and designed by Rebecca Ferguson of Lochcarron of Scotland.  In a spirit of hospitable unity, Rebecca included red, white, blue and yellow in the design and Catriona said, “The tartan looks fantastic and I love that it represents the colours of the European, US and Scottish flags.  The Solheim Cup is hugely competitive but played in great spirit between the two teams and I think this tartan represents that perfectly.”

Scotland now claims to lead the world in the development and promotion of women’s golf, so it behoves the rest of us to make sure that we keep up.  And we don’t need to be superstars to enjoy golf or promote it.  Today is the end of Golf and Health Week, which aimed to highlight how good golf is for our health and wellbeing and if you go to golfandhealth.org, you’ll see that it’s a lifelong thing, not just a fad or phase of the week.

Marilynn Smith, one of the founder members of the LPGA, who died earlier this month, just short of her 90th birthday, thought golf was for cissies until her parents insisted she try it when they realised that playing baseball with the boys was doing nothing but harm to her vocabulary.  She fell in love with the game and spent a lifetime promoting it and encouraging girls and women to play.  Vibrant, enthusiastic, engaging, interested and interesting, Marilynn was also a player of no little skill, with 21 wins to her name and was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 2006.

If you go to lpga.com, you’ll find Ron Sirak’s lovely tribute to Marilynn, a woman with a gift for friendship and a smile for everyone.  Just last month, at the Bank of Hope Founders Cup in Phoenix, Arizona, she and fellow co-founders Shirley Spork and Marlene Bauer Hagge were on hand to support and encourage today’s LPGA players and join in the Drive On initiative to get more girls golfing.  Indomitable. Irrepressible.  Inspirational.