Tiger Woods wriggled happily in his fifth green jacket. 'Ah, it fits,' he sighed contentedly. He was home, at last. Cosy in the Butler cabin, his family close at hand. He watched film of his first Masters win, hugging his father at the back of the 18th, juxtaposed with the embrace of his son, Charlie, moments earlier.
But he didn't cry for the cameras. He didn't lose the moment through a mist of salty tears. He had been through too much on this journey. He was all cried out, long ago. And it had all been worth it.
It was approximately 1.50pm local time on Sunday when play around Augusta was momentarily suspended. Not for the threatened weather front that had played havoc with the final day schedule, but because a different kind of thunderstorm was blowing through. On the 16th tee, Woods had unlocked a portal to the past. His eight-iron to the green had pitched perfectly and was rolling, rolling, rolling towards the hole. America screamed its encouragement and raucous approval.
Tigers Woods smiled as 2018 Masters champion Patrick Reed (left) gave him the green jacket
'Ah, it fits,' said a beaming Woods after putting on the famous jacket at Augusta on Sunday
Woods had won his first Masters title way back in 1997, when Nick Faldo gave him the jacket
Woods began ball-whispering, too, his murmured implorations encouraging each rotation as the slope did is thing. The object of all this futility came to rest some three feet from the hole, but it would be quite some time before those in proximity could get on with their game. The cheers echoed and echoed, the chants too. Augusta does not shed it decorum like this often; but then this is arguably the greatest comeback in American sporting history.
Short of rolling a stone from the entrance to his tomb it is hard to imagine Woods could have done more to make this miracle happen. At the champions dinner here in Augusta two years ago, it took a cocktail of drugs that could stun an elephant just to get him to the table. Once there, he could barely sit for long enough to eat. He whispered to his dining companions that he was done. Not with the meal, but with golf. And not just with championship golf, either. Any golf. His physical state was such, there was no form of the game that was not out to hurt him. He wouldn't even be able to play for fun, with friends, with his kids once they had grown. It was a pitiful end.
Yet Tiger Woods: medical miracle, is just one strand of this remarkable story. What the world witnessed on Sunday was about more than just the physical, the triumph of science and intellectual imagination that has rebuilt a broken man. At Augusta, Woods reconnected with his grand historical legacy, with what he was and what he could yet be. He even broke new ground, coming from behind on the last day to win a major for the first time in his career. And as Ian Poulter pointed out on Friday, statistically, a 43-year-old – Woods is the same age as the Englishman – has a three per cent chance of winning the Masters. So Woods overcame more than just gruelling personal trauma. He beat age, he beat a field of younger men that had grown used to talking of him in the past tense and he beat pressure; the pressure of competition, and the pressure he has placed upon himself, to get back to here and to win again, at a time in his life when his children are old enough to see and understand. They were here on Sunday, at the side of the 18th green, as he brought it home. Charlie walked beside him as he strode to sign for his card, proud as punch.
American Woods won the Masters for a fifth time but it was just his first major win since 2008
Woods was a very popular winner and the majority of fans in the crown looked pleased for him
They were the ones he made a bee-line for after the winning putt had dropped. Mum, daughter, son. He hugged them close, whooping, screaming, punching the air, emotions that those
