TIGER ALREADY HAS WON THE CLARET JUG, EVEN IF HE SHOOTS 100

Using his beloved St. Andrews as a stage, Woods condemned the rival LIV Golf series, burnishing his legacy as an all-time great who plays because he loves and honors the game — not for blood money

     It doesn’t matter if he’s swallowed by a sand monster at St. Andrews, a possibility this week if his nearly-amputated right leg isn’t situated firmly in the hollow. “I think every pot bunker has gotten a little bit deeper,” said Tiger Woods, able to make light of his cruel existential reality. “It’s kind of funny when I look back at historic videos of the guys playing out of the Road Hole bunker, and it really wasn’t that deep then. Now you can’t see the grandstands when you get in there. All you see is clear blue sky.”

     Nor does it matter if he slips on the Swilcan Bridge, where, if the gods finally are fair, he’ll navigate the final round Sunday in his blood-red shirt and black slacks for one last step back into time. “I mean, the history and the people that have walked over that bridge,” he said of the fabled span extending over the burn at The Home of Golf. “I tell you what, honestly, now I have to be a little more careful with spikes on that bridge. I don’t have quite the agility I used to. I almost ate it today.”

     Nor does it matter, when you think about his greater purpose in golf’s tumultuous summer of 2022, if Woods shoots 100. He can miss the British Open cut, disappear into a pub with multiple pints — one for every one of his surgeries in a cursed life — and never play another competitive round.

     Seems he already has won this year’s Claret Jug.

     He claimed it when he sat inside a media tent by the North Sea, pulled out a big-head driver and ripped the most important, well-timed tee shot of his career. In fact, the ball nailed Greg Norman in the crotch region. It was a critical reminder that Woods, even if his body is failing him 16 1/2 months after the horrific SUV accident that threatened his life, continues to be the most influential figure in the sport’s long, esteemed history. The only way his rebuke of the rival LIV Golf series could have been more resounding was if the Saudis funding the breakaway renegade tour, with blood money, were sitting beside him and wiping spittle from their faces.

     His condemnation of All Things LIV — the shameful sportswashing efforts of Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, the non-stop public warfare waged by ringleader Norman, the weasel defections of Phil Mickelson, Brooks Koepka, Dustin Johnson, Bryson DeChambeau and the rest — was exquisitely delivered amid the medieval streets and 16th-century buildings of a Scottish fairytale come true. Remember, Woods could have taken a $1 billion offer to be the face of the rebel initiative. But though his annual PGA Tour winnings wane in the downwind odor of LIV’s $25-million tournament purses and massive appearance fees, he rejected greed and geopolitics. He chose an admirable loyalty to the traditional mechanism that allowed him to learn the game in his southern California youth while his parents, including his famously demanding father, took out a second home mortgage to finance his dreams.

     Without the Tour, he wouldn’t have become TIGER WOODS. Unlike the money-grabbing turncoats, he didn’t cede to convenient amnesia.

     “I think that what they've done is they've turned their back on what has allowed them to get to this position,” Woods said. “What these players are doing for guaranteed money, what is the incentive to practice? What is the incentive to go out there and earn it in the dirt? You’re just getting paid a lot of money upfront and playing a few events and playing 54 holes. They’re playing blaring music and have all these atmospheres that are different.

     “I know what the PGA Tour stands for and what we have done and what the tour has given us, the ability to chase after our careers and to earn what we get and the trophies we have been able to play for and the history that has been a part of this game.”

     Not that his legacy needed any support beams. But if Woods never wins another major — and he won’t, with his return from earlier hell serving as his famous, final scene at the 2019 Masters — his LIV takedown was a magnificent epilogue to a movie that must be made. His underpropping of the PGA Tour is a reminder that he plays, first and foremost, for the love and honor of the game. It also allowed him to break some news for young players who see the Saudi option as an easy path to riches. Their money grab likely will come with a price, he emphasized, with the four major championships likely to lay daunting obstacles for LIV players to enter events, if not ban them altogether.

     “Some of these players may not ever get a chance to play in major championships. That is a possibility,” Woods said. “We don’t know that for sure yet. It’s up to the major championship bodies to make that determination. But that is a possibility, that some players will never, ever get a chance to play in a major championship, never get a chance to experience this right here, walk down the fairways at Augusta National. That, to me, I just don’t understand it.”

     It isn’t just a warning. It’s the truth. With the money and power of American TV networks tied into the majors and PGA Tour deep into the future, the Open Championship might be the last chance for a traitor such as, say, Koepka to win a big one. If the R&A, the Open’s governing body, unites with the Masters, U.S. Open and PGA Championship in not counting LIV events as point-earners in the Official World Golf Ranking, the rogue project becomes a lesser brand, a 54-hole circus act for old farts, sellouts and kids we’ll never know much about.

     “I can understand 54 holes is almost like a mandate when you get to the Senior Tour — the guys are a little bit older and a little more banged up — but when you’re at this young age and some of these kids — they really are kids who have gone from amateur golf into that organization — 72-hole tests are a part of it,” Woods said. “I just don’t see how that move is positive in the long term for a lot of these players, especially if the LIV organization doesn’t get world-ranking points and the major championships change their criteria for entering the events.”

    As he nears 47, with a body going on 60, a 54-hole, LIV-style event actually would make medical sense for Tiger … if he didn’t have so much allegiance and dignity in his DNA. Make no mistake, the overseers of the majors are listening to him. It was no coincidence that R&A executive Martin Slumbers, a day after Woods’ blistering attack, offered his own criticism, saying LIV Golf is “harming the perception of the sport.”

     Said Slumbers: “I firmly believe that the existing golf ecosystem has successfully provided stable pathways for golfers to enter the sport and develop and realize their full potential. Professional golfers are entitled to choose where they want to play and to accept the prize money that's offered to them. But there is no such thing as a free lunch.”

     Completing a double whammy, the R&A didn’t invite Norman, who has won two Claret Jugs, to a dinner this week for past Open champions. No one wanted him spewing LIV propaganda during the tournament’s 150th anniversary. “(It’s) an extremely important milestone for golf and we want to ensure that the focus remains on celebrating the championship and its heritage,” the R&A said in a statement. “Unfortunately, we do not believe that would be the case if Greg were to attend.”

     Norman replied with a typical headline-seeking volley, telling Australian Golf Digest: “I’m disappointed. I would have thought the R&A would have stayed above it all given their position in world golf. (It’s) petty, as all I have done is promote and grow the game of golf globally, on and off the golf course, for more than four decades.”

     Who was quick to applaud Norman’s exile? Woods, of course, and rightfully so. “The R&A obviously have their opinions and rulings and their decision,” he said. “Greg has done some things that I don’t think are in the best interest of our game, and we’re coming back to probably the most historic and traditional place in our sport. I believe it’s the right thing.

     “I know Greg tried to do this (start a rival tour) back in the early ’90s. It didn’t work then, and he’s trying to make it work now. I still don’t see how that’s in the best interests of the game. What the European Tour and what the PGA Tour stands for and what they’ve done, and also all the professional — all the governing bodies of the game of golf and the major championships, how they run it. I think they see it differently than what Greg sees it.”

     And much as Norman speaks of an easy compromise — a merger, akin to the American Football League’s challenge of the NFL and the American Basketball Association’s challenge of the NBA — he keeps omitting the human rights atrocities of the Saudi government. Nothing is wrong with a disruptor taking on a monopoly, as long as the money is clean. When elite golfers join LIV, they abandon virtue as sheep for a gang of murderers.

     The darkness doesn’t work amid a week of romance, when the honest sector of the golf world recognizes what is so proud and majestic about the sport. Jack Nicklaus returned to the Old Course for the first time in 17 years, breaking a vow that his pose atop the Swilcan Bridge would be his final memory there. He couldn’t stay away, at 82, as St. Andrews named him an honorary citizen.  “When I came here in 1964, I couldn’t believe that St Andrews was a golf course that would still test golfers of that time,” he said. “It still tests the golfers at this time. It’s a magical golf course. And to believe the game of golf essentially started here, it just absolutely is mind-boggling to me that it still stands up to the golfers of today.”

     Defending Open champion Collin Morikawa, just 25, is as awestruck as Woods was at his age. He knows such moments might end if he joined LIV. “I’ve never been to a golf course or a golf club like this where I think really just the entire town is encompassed around St. Andrews,’’ he said. “The love for the game, the love for the sport, I think kind of breathes and lives through the town. I’ve never been in a place like that. Not just the golf course, but the atmosphere, clubhouse, everything around it. There's only been a few times where it's happened like that in, I think, forever, and I understand why people say this is a very special place.” Jon Rahm talked of visiting old bookstores to read up on golf history. Either player is capable of winning and entering a pantheon, as once described by two-time-winner Nicklaus: “If you’re going to be a player people will remember, you have to win the Open at St. Andrews.”

     As Rory McIlroy said, it won’t be healthy for the sport if a betrayer wins the Open. Conversely, it would be an all-time moment if Woods was in contention on the final holes. While we learned long ago never to doubt him, even Tiger suggests winning is a pipedream. It was a miracle that he finished the Masters in 47th place, with a hard-on-the-eyes limp, and only a few weeks have passed since he withdrew in the third round of the PGA Championship with pain in his leg and foot. He sounds like a man who’s thrilled to be at his favorite place on Earth, perhaps for the last time, as St. Andrews usually hosts an Open every five years.

     “My body certainly can get better, but realistically, not a whole lot,” Woods said. “For the most part of my rehab, I was just hoping I could walk again, you know, walk normal and have a normal life and maybe play a little hit-and-giggle golf with my son or my friends at home. But lo and behold, I’ve played championship golf this year. And once I realized that I could possibly play at a high level, my focus was to get back here at St. Andrews to play in this championship, it being the most historic one we’ve had. I just didn’t want to miss this Open here at the home of golf.

     “I’m not going to play a full schedule ever again. My body just won’t allow me to do that. I don’t know how many Open Championships I have left here at St. Andrews, but I wanted this one.”

     He wanted it for more than nostalgia, apparently.

     Consider it a good walk conquered, a cowardly opponent scorched.

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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.