2024 British Open: Tiger Woods should play as long as he wants

Tiger Woods will not win the 2024 Open Championship. Tiger Woods probably won’t win another major at all. Tiger Woods, in all likelihood, will never win another tournament on the PGA Tour.

And Tiger Woods should still keep playing all of these tournaments as long as he damn well pleases.

Thursday at Troon in the Open Championship presented the latest example of Tiger Woods in the 2020s, a legend long past his prime, hacking away far down the leaderboard, struggling to play his way into the weekend.

At this point, it’s nearly a fill-in-the-blank story: “After a promising start at the [insert major name here], Tiger Woods stumbled to a [finishing number over par] round that left him [a disturbingly large number] strokes off the lead. Woods will now be fighting to make the cut…” Swap out the numbers, rinse, reuse as needed.

This week, the specifics run like this: Woods carded six bogeys and two double-bogeys against two birdies to finish at +8, with a total of 79 and 11 strokes off the lead. Without a strong Friday rally — on a very brief overnight turnaround — Woods will once again miss the cut this week, once again plod through a tournament where he didn’t need to bother packing for the weekend.

The numbers, once so astounding in Woods’ favor, are no longer kind. This year, he has a 60th-place finish at the Masters and two missed cuts at the PGA Championship and the U.S. Open. He hasn’t finished out the weekend at a major held outside Augusta since the 2020 PGA Championship.

Look, let’s be honest here. Watching Woods in 2024 is uncomfortable as hell. These days is an exercise in straw-grasping, talking yourself into ever-more-ridiculous and desperate if-only scenarios. If only he can card a 65 … if only he can birdie five of the last six … if only he can make par … if only he can roll in a four-foot putt … if only he can finish the damn round …

We’re like blackjack players on a losing streak, doubling and re-doubling our bets, hoping that the cards come up right, knowing all the while that we’re only digging the hole deeper. We still hedge, the way I did in those opening sentences, because if anyone could pull a miracle win out of the ether — like he did in 2019 — it’s Tiger Woods.

Still, all those grim signs piling up around Woods are increasing the volume of calls for him to wrap it up. The latest: Colin Montgomerie, who suggested last week that it was long past time for Woods to call it a career.

“There is a time for all sportsmen to say goodbye, but it’s very difficult to tell Tiger it’s time to go.”

Counterpoint: Why do we need to tell Tiger it’s time to go? As long as Woods wants to play, why shouldn’t he play? No single athlete has revolutionized his sport the way Woods revolutionized golf; he pulled the sport out of its country-club origins and made it cool for the masses, in a way no one — not even Arnie and Jack — ever managed.

Another, more relevant counterpoint, made by Woods himself on Tuesday: “”As a past champion, I’m exempt until I’m 60. Colin’s not. He’s not a past champion, so he’s not exempt. So he doesn’t get the opportunity to make that decision. I do.”

That’s the key, right there: This is Woods’ decision, and Woods’ alone. This isn’t an issue of Woods’ “legacy” — that was firmly established 20 years ago, and as long as Woods doesn’t go try to blow up the entire sport by helping start a rival golf league, his good name will stay intact. Woods ought to play as long as he damn well pleases, and every time he tees it up, he’ll draw galleries to rival any player, now and forever.

Watch the galleries around Woods wherever he walks. Check out the cell phones raised high to record his every swing, a thousand little clips that will never be watched again. Listen to the sound the gallery makes when he steps to every tee shot, and — more rarely — when he sinks a birdie. They’ll call out his name — “TOY-GAH,” they pronounce it at Royal Troon — and they’ll urge him on, no matter how much he butchers a hole, a round or a course.

Late Thursday afternoon, as Woods walked up the 18th toward the clubhouse, the galleries lining the fairway rose to their collective feet to celebrate Woods one more time. Yes, everyone is cheering for who Woods was, rather than who he is, but so what? Love is love, and for every pious fan who’s abandoned Woods for his on-course swearing or his off-course behavior, a dozen still want to see him one more time, to catch a glimpse of one of the most famous American athletes ever.

So if you’re thinking about checking out Woods in person — perhaps next year at the PGA Championship in Charlotte, or the U.S. Open in Pittsburgh — go ahead and do it. He’s not hard to find when he’s on the course; just follow the roar.

But just in case, maybe don’t wait until the weekend.