The Greatest Comeback? It Has To Be Up There

There is nothing the Sporting World loves more than an underdog, except perhaps a comeback of remarkable proportions.

Tiger Woods has by winning the Masters in Augusta just completed one of the biggest comebacks in possibly any sport.

Here was a man that was so dominant in his prime there was an aura about him that intimidated many of those who shared the courses of the world with him.

Woods won his first Masters back in 1997 when he was just 21 years of age, and became the youngest golfer ever to win the famous green jacket. He won the Masters a further three times in 2001, 2002 and 2005.

In addition to the Masters he won the US Open three times with his last victory coming in 2008. He won the Open Championship three times, with his last win in 2006, and the PGA Championship four times with his last win in 2007. Along with the majors he won numerous individual awards including the PGA Player of the Year in 1997 and then every year from 1999 to 2009 bar two years, 2004 and 2008. He won it again in 2013.

It was in 2009 that the man who had been placed on a lofty golfing pedestal fell from grace. He had a very public marital split and was arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol in 2017.

Not only did it appear that his personal life was a mess, but so too was his body. His back which had been troubling him was in desperate need of repair. In 2014 he was forced to withdraw from the Honda Classic at the 13th hole on his final round because of the pain in his back. He missed the Masters that year after having surgery.

In total he has ended up having four operations on his back to try and ease the pain and discomfort, including a spinal fusion. The final operation would have had a huge impact on his ability to swing a golf club.

He dropped down the World Rankings, or should we say plummeted! Here was a man at one time being proclaimed as the greatest golfer of all time finding himself ranked lower than 1000 in the World.

Just 18 months ago he was quoted as saying that just sitting in a golf cart gave him pain and he was not sure whether he could continue.

Yet at 43 years of age, having not won one of the majors in eleven years, – the four most prestigious events in professional golf are the Masters Tournament, the U.S. Open, The Open Championship and the PGA Championship, – and not having won the Masters since 2005, Tiger Woods has proved everyone wrong. He becomes only the second golfer to win the Masters in three seperate decades. Most importantly of all he must have laid to rest the doubts in his own mind.

Golf is such a mental game, and that is what makes Woods achievement so remarkable. Having been out of the reckoning for so long, and having fought back from major surgery are two major hurdles to overcome. It is however the mental hurdle that would have been the hardest. When you have dominated the sport and fallen so far to overcome those mental demons to achieve this recent success is remarkable.

Not only that the players vying for Championships have changed since he last won the Masters, few would have come up against the Tiger Woods of old and therefore would have not been in awe of him and his record.

Tiger Woods now has 15 Major titles to his name. Jack Nicklaus arguably the greatest golfer ever won 18. He also won those 18 Majors by the time he was 46 years of age. Not surprisingly Nicklaus was one of the first to congratulate Woods on his victory. As he would know first hand what a remarkable achievement it has been.

There are bound to be many who will not give Woods the credit due to his personal issues, and his fall from grace, but to sports fans it has to be one of the greatest comebacks of all time. Sure there have been great comebacks within games by teams and individuals, but few have been so far off the pace and gone through so much physically and mentally before claiming a title. Although sport still has still thrown up some other remarkable individuals.

Tennis Player Andre Agassi may have an idea as tow heat Woods has achieved after all in 1996 he was the world number one and had won a gold medal at the Olympic Games in Atlanta. Suddenly his performance started to deteriorate and his losses began to outweigh his wins. His marriage to actress Brooke Shields was falling apart, he suffered a serious wrist injury, and as we all later found out he started using crystal methamphetamine. His ranking like Woods sank. He went down to 141. His career was written off. Yet in 1998 after a lot of hard work and soul searching he returned to top mental and physical form and this was reflected by his form on the court. He won five titles and soared from the world no. 110 to no. 6. This was the highest jump into the top 10 made by any player during a calendar year!

In F1 Niki Lauda the Austrian driver was crowned F1 World Drivers’ Champ, three times winning in 1975, 1977 and 1984. In fact he’s the only driver to have been champion for both Ferrari and McLaren! Most will recall that in 1976, his Ferrari swerved off the track, hit an embankment, burst into flames. Lauda was trapped in the wreckage of his car and suffered severe burns to his head. He also inhaled hot toxic gases that damaged his lungs and blood. Incredibly Lauda was conscious and once freed from his car he was able to stand. It was later that he fell into a coma. Six weeks after what many believed would be a career-ending crash, he was behind the wheel at the Italian Grand Prix. Lauda went on to win two more championship titles before eventually retiring and setting up his own airline.

In Boxing we have seen Muhammed Ali miss three years in his prime after he refused toe serve in the Vietnam War, but he came back to reclaim his World Title beating George Foreman in the Rumble in the Jungle, in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo. Foreman as devastated by the loss but claimed it was a pivotal moment in his life. In 1977, he officially retired and became an ordained Christian minister. In 1994, aged 45, he returned to the ring and shocked the world when he knocked out 27-year-old Michael Moorer to win the unified WBA, IBF, and Heavyweight World titles. Foreman remains the oldest heavyweight champion in history. He retired a second time in 1997 at the age of 48. HIs record at that time was 76 wins, 5 losses, and 68 knockouts.

One could go on as there have been many but it seems fitting to end with another golfer. Ben Hogan was the Tiger Woods of his era. Between 1938 through 1959, Hogan had won 63 professional golf tournaments. Then in 1949 tragedy struck. Hogan and his wife, Valerie, were involved in a head-on collision with a Greyhound bus. Both survived and remained married for over 5o years. The accident however left Hogan with a double-fracture of the pelvis, a fractured collar bone, a fracture of the left ankle, a chipped rib, and near-fatal blood clots. The doctors treating him said that he may never walk again. Ironically he regained much of his strength by walking extensively and soon he enhanced his walks by swinging a gold club again. He returned to the PGA Tour at the start the 1950 season. In 1953 he was the only player, until Tiger Woods, to win three major PGA tournaments in one year! So maybe the two of them share more than a talent for golf.