Whether it’s on Friday or Sunday, Tiger Woods will cross over the Swilcan Bridge for the final time in the British Open at St. Andrews.
He just doesn’t know if that means this year or forever.
“Who knows?” Woods said Tuesday, unwilling to contemplate a future in golf he knows so little about. The Open isn’t likely to return to the Old Course for at least four years, probably a bit longer. Woods is 46 and with what he described as “a lot of hardware” in his right leg that was pieced back together following his February 2021 car crash.
“I don’t know — if it is that long — whether I will be able to physically compete at this level by then,” Woods said. “It’s also one of the reasons why I wanted to play in this championship. I don’t know what my career is going to be like. I’m not going to play a full schedule ever again. My body just won’t allow me to do that that.
“I don’t know how many Open Championships I have left here at St. Andrews, but I wanted this one,” he said. “It started here for me in ’95, and if it ends here in ’22, it does. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t. If I get the chance to play one more, it would be great. But there’s no guarantee.” And he is leaving nothing to chance.
In the other two majors he played this year, at the Masters and PGA Championship, Woods played only 27 holes of practice ahead of the opening round. He played Ballybunion in Ireland last week with Rory McIlroy. He walked 18 holes with a wedge and a putter on Saturday evening at St. Andrews. He played 18 holes on Sunday, and then nine holes each of the last two days. Throw in the four-hole exhibition and that’s more than his previous two majors combined.
Woods wasn’t kidding when he said he wasn’t about to miss this Open at St. Andrews, the 150th edition of golf’s oldest championship. He won two of his three Opens on the Old Course.
“Yesterday for those four holes, he was moving better than I’d seen him move in a while,” said McIlroy, who played the “Celebration of Champions” with Woods over the four-hole loop on Monday. “That was really good to see. And his swing … hitting the golf ball and swinging the club aren’t the issue. It’s the walking part of it that’s the struggle. But he seemed to be moving well.”
The conditions have been so dry that Woods says the fairways are running faster than the greens. The wind was at its worst on Tuesday, maybe the strongest it will be all week, and the air can be heavier that it seems.
“So trying to get my mind right for that,” Woods said. “I’ve been trying to do that, but the only way you can truly do it actually is to get out here and experience it.”
This week is all about the experience, and no one does history quite like the R&A with a “150” logo imprinted everywhere, even on the blue seats in the grandstands.
Still, it’s the Old Course that is the star no matter what edition of The Open it might be. “This is unlike any other tournament really, The Open at St Andrews,” Jordan Spieth said. “It certainly hasn’t disappointed being on the grounds this week. The course is incredibly firm. The greens are flawless, and the setting as you come in — these closing holes — is even more grand than it was seven years ago.
