For Tiger Woods, pain is the price to play in the Masters

AUGUSTA, Ga. — In 2008, U.S. Open at Torrey Pines, Tiger Woods claimed his 14th major championship with two stress fractures in his left leg and a torn ACL.

Sixteen years later, Woods is still playing through pain.

“I hurt every day,” he said Tuesday at the Masters, two days before he is to make his 26th appearance in the tournament. His high pain threshold has become a part of the legend that began at the Augusta National golf club, where he won the first of his five green jackets in 1997 with a record-setting 18-under par score of 270. Woods withdrew from the Masters in 2023 after reaggravating his plantar fasciitis. After vowing at the beginning of the year that he would play once a month, he has entered only one event, the Genesis Invitational in February, where he withdrew with flulike symptoms.

“My body wasn’t ready,” Woods said. “My game wasn’t ready. But now we have major championships every month from here through July. So now the once-a-month hopefully kicks in.”

Dating back to 1997, Woods has never missed a cut at the Masters as a pro. Even as his body has let him down with one injury after another, his admiration of the tournament has never wavered.

His eyes still light up when he thinks about the first time he visited Augusta National for a college tournament. No matter what is happening in his life, coming to the Masters recharges him. In April 2010, two months after he apologized publicly for his extramarital affairs, he came to the Masters, where he could focus on golf. With little competition coming into the tournament, he finished in a tie for seventh, one of his 14 top 10s in the event. Pain is the price he will pay to play in the Masters.

“Just the fact that I’m able to put on a green jacket for the rest of my life is just absolutely amazing, “ Woods, 48, said.

Though with his injuries and relatively advanced age in a game dominated by younger players, it’s easy to dismiss Woods now as a mostly ceremonial presence in the Masters. A part of the allure of the tournament has always been the history of the course and its great champions from Gene Sarazen to Ben Hogan to Arnold Palmer to Jack Nicklaus to Gary Player. As the only major championship that comes back to the same place every year, the golf world has unparalleled intimacy and knowledge of this golf course.

Woods may be one of the tournament’s greatest champions and also one of its biggest fans.

“[The Masters] has meant a lot to my family,” he said. “It’s meant a lot to me. I always want to keep playing in this.”

As a past champion, he can play in the tournament for as long as he wants. Palmer was in the 2004 Masters field at age 74 for the 50th and final time. Woods is unlikely to play competitive golf into his 70s. He has long said that he has no interest in being a ceremonial golfer, happy to bask in the nostalgia for his greatness from adoring fans. For now, he believes he can still play with the best players in the world.

“If everything comes together,” he said, “I think I can get one more.”

Many thought he was done winning major championships. Then he won the 2019 Masters, when everything did come together. To win a sixth green jacket this week would be the greatest accomplishment of his career. It wouldn’t just be because of all that he’s been through with the injuries, but also because of the endurance of a self-belief and love of golf that began when he was a 6-month-old baby sitting in a high chair watching his father Earl hit balls into a net in their garage.

“I love golf,” he said Tuesday when asked why he continues to play. “And be able to have the love I have for the game and the love for competition be intertwined, I think that’s one of the reasons why I’ve had a successful career. I just love doing the work.”

On Thursday at 1:24 p.m. ET, when he starts his first round of the 88th Masters with Jason Day and Max Homa, Woods will get a chance to prove to himself that his body can endure the hilly Augusta National layout for four days and he can win another green jacket.

It’s hard to doubt him at Augusta, where everything works together for the good for him when he’s on these hallowed grounds.

“I still think things” can come together, he said. “I don’t know when that day is, when that day comes, but I still think that I can. I haven’t got to that point where I don’t think I can’t.”