IF TIGER IS ON OPIOIDS, AS AN ANALYST SAID, HE SHOULD RETIRE AND GET HELP
Another major means another missed cut for a man who can’t reclaim the past, and if Mark Roe is telling the truth, Woods must end his hopeless, reckless attempts to make cuts as a 50th birthday nears
Mark Roe is not a nitwit who climbed from the Firth of Clyde to raise hell. He played in the British Open championship 12 times and finished as high as 13th in the U.S. Open. If Tiger Woods is taking painkillers to deal with torture in his body, Roe might know. He also knows the past, when Woods had hydrocodone and hydromorphone in his system when he was arrested for DUI seven years ago.
So, on a Thursday at Royal Troon when Woods shot 79 and had us wondering when he’ll retire, Roe heightened doubts about his immediate future. “You look at the eyes, you gotta think that there’s quite a lot of painkillers being taken to cope with the pain, you know,” he said on the Sky Sports broadcast in the United Kingdom and Ireland.
“Not easy.”
His commentary wasn’t executed to damage Woods in what could be his final Open. Roe is trying to educate an audience that doesn’t understand why a legend who has won 15 major tournaments — and has won only once since 2008 — continues to shrivel thickly into the missed-cut zone. He has reached the point where ceremonial tee shots make more sense than shooting 8-over par in Scotland. It was easy to poke fun at Colin Montgomerie, who never won a major, when he called for Woods to move on in life. Was he wrong?
“I hope people remember Tiger as Tiger was, the passion and the charismatic aura around him. There is none of that now,” he said this week. “At Pinehurst (for the U.S. Open), he did not seem to enjoy a single shot and you think, ‘What the hell is he doing?’ He’s coming to Troon and he won’t enjoy it there either. Aren't we there? I'd have thought we were past there. There is a time for all sportsmen to say goodbye, but it's very difficult to tell Tiger it's time to go.”
If he is taking opioids, as Roe suggests, Woods should retire today. The man has endured so many surgeries and wrecks and scandals that we wonder how his head deals with tragedy. He should have agreed to captain the 2025 U.S. Ryder Cup team. He should think about joining a network as a regular commentator. Continuing to play just fills us with bitterness. We don’t want to see him perform poorly, ever. But he insists on showing up and playing badly, with an exit Friday representing his third straight major without seeing a weekend.
“I didn't do a whole lot of things right today," Woods said. “I think I had, what, three three-putts today? I didn't hit my irons very close, and I didn't give myself a whole lot of looks today. I need to shoot something in the mid-60s tomorrow to get something going on the weekend.”
We’re just hoping he breaks 80. Only two birthdays from the Big 50, Woods should distance himself from the era when he lit up the sport like no other player. “I need to do a lot more work in the gym and keep progressing like we have,” he said. No, I would prefer he remember the 11th hole, when his shot landed by the train tracks just before the ScotRail line arrived. He has not broken par in a major in 14 consecutive rounds. This season, his average score in a major is 75.4. He had six bogeys and two double bogeys. It’s impossible to watch.
“I just wish I could have played a little bit more, but I've been saving it for the majors just in case I do something pretty major,” Woods said. “Hopefully, next year will be a little bit better than this year.”
How? He should be enjoying his children. He should spend less time helping PGA Tour Enterprises from trying to cut deals with LIV Golf. The other night, he couldn’t sleep on an overseas flight after the assassination attempt on Donald Trump. “I didn’t accomplish a lot because I wasn’t in the right frame of mind,” Woods said. “It was a long night and that’s all we watched the entire time on the way over here. I didn’t sleep at all on the flight, and then we just got on the golf course.”
And now he’s leaving early, again.
Sometime soon, I dare say, for good.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.