Injured Tiger Woods put on clock at Masters, says Jon Rahm

Jon Rahm was in disbelief. It was Masters Sunday and Rahm was playing alongside a hobbled Tiger Woods. Their morning pairing had little bearing on who would take home the green jacket — they were in the 10:50 a.m. tee time, just the fifth of the day — but drew plenty of attention anyway.

This was the first real tournament Woods had played since his 2021 car crash and he’d made an inspired run to make the cut. By Sunday, though, he was limping towards the finish line. And on the seventh hole, to Rahm’s great surprise, their twosome got put on the clock.

“We all looked at the official, like, ‘he can’t walk any faster, let’s be honest,’” he remembered on Wednesday ahead of this week’s Hero World Challenge. “Like, he was already doing an amazing job trying to move up and down those hills.”

Woods is this week’s tournament host in the Bahamas. He was scheduled to be a player-host, too, before he withdrew on Monday with plantar fasciitis, an injury directly related to his ongoing recovery from the crash. Most of the questions about playing with Woods are in the past tense, at least for now. But Rahm was glad to have been alongside him for one of his nine competitive rounds in 2022.

He had some disdain for the official who’d decided to put them on the clock — “I’m not going to mention how much we had to wait on the second shot on 8,” he remembered — but his larger point was one about Woods.

“We all joked around with the official, and then when he turned around, Tiger takes off,” he said. “And I’m looking at my caddie, like, well, this is incredible.”

Rahm was impressed with Woods’ eagerness to keep pace despite the fact that he was struggling to put weight on his right foot for much of the round. He used his driver as a walking