Tiger Woods prepared to play through pain barrier in unlikely Masters quest

Tiger Woods’s first real memory of the Masters is of watching Jack Nicklaus play on the Sunday of 1986. Woods was 10, and had been out to play nine holes with his dad that morning, they were back in front of the TV in time to see Nicklaus, then 46, come around the turn in one of the most famous rounds in the history of the majors, from six shots back, he made five birdies and an eagle, and won by one. Woods remembers watching him hit that famous second shot on 15, from the hill over the water and to 12 feet from the hole, and the way he raised both fists in the air to celebrate, and wondering why he was so happy when he still had to make the putt.

Over the years Woods has asked Nicklaus, more than once, what he was thinking about in that moment. Woods never really got a good answer out of Nicklaus, but, according to his book Unprecedented this is the way he’s come to think about it: “He did what he needed to do to put himself in a position to win the Masters. He wasn’t thinking about winning. He was thinking only about the shot, and what he needed to do. He wasn’t getting ahead of himself.”

Thirty-six years later, Woods is 46 himself, a month older now than Nicklaus was when he became the oldest man to win the tournament. And of course he’s planning on breaking that record. No one, not even Woods himself, gave him a chance of doing it after the car crash last February, when he lost control of his SUV while he was doing double the speed limit on a stretch of mountain road outside Los Angeles. No one even thought he was going to make it here this year. “I never left my hospital bed even to see my living room for three months.” After that he still had months in a wheelchair, and on crutches, in and out of surgery, while