Tiger Woods celebrates on Sunday after winning his fifth Masters title and first major since 2008. Getty Images
Enough words have been written - and certainly will be - about Tiger Woods’ improbable victory.
But beyond the fist pumps, the hug with his son and his mom, as well as the high fives from his colleagues, the most telling moment from Sunday’s historic victory was what came afterwards inside Butler Cabin.
Before presenting Woods with his fifth green jacket - the culmination of 11 years filled with every struggle and setback imaginable - Jim Nantz asked Woods what the win meant to him.
Nantz went on to show Woods quickly edited comparisons of the hug shared by him and his father Earl after his first Masters win in 1997 and the hug he had just had with his son Charlie.
There was no doubt Nantz was fishing for an iconic moment - a Bubba-esque moment - that could be aired every Masters until the end of time alongside the final putt: Tiger crying in relief that his journey from son to father - from dominating the sport to a shocking fallout and back again - was finally over.
And yet Woods sat, responding to the video and question as stoically as one can be after just having won the Masters. From watching his emotions on a screen over 1,000 miles to his west, many others and I could see the question he really wanted to be asked, one that Nantz wouldn’t ask him, and one that the media would, for the most part, glance over in the coming days:
“What now, Tiger?”
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Sunday’s tap-in on Holly’s iconic 18th green felt to many like a perfect end of a movie come to life. It had all the makings of one. A once-untouchable hero, albeit an enigmatic one, humbled by the realities of life in a sport that reflects it, battles against the greatest of odds to find himself again what he had been for so long: a champion, but now one appreciative of the fleeting nature of skill and life.
It’s one hell of a hero’s journey.
But Tiger was not willing to talk about what this win meant for his legacy. He said 15 - a reference to his long awaited 15th major - was a long time coming, but he mentioned it in a tone that seemed to suggest it was just another great moment in a career full of them.
He spoke of this win not as the culmination of his career, but a shining moment the world could enjoy, the same way people around the world enjoyed his 1997 win, his drives that had to be seen to be believed, his aura.
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“I knew it,” his mother, Kultida Woods, told him as the two embraced just off 18 green.
Those who knew Woods never doubted that he would become Tiger again, even if Woods himself began to move on from golf entirely. Two years ago, he couldn’t coach the Presidents Cup because of the excruciating pain of bumping up and down while on a golf cart.
But there’s always been something special about Tiger. Whether he was the ruthless assassin revolutionizing the game that he once was, or the survivor with the same ferocity as ever that he is now, Woods has never truly gone away.
I would argue every genius has a moment, while their physical or mental skills wither away, that shows their gift to the world one last time. In that last great moment, they show us why we were always unable to look away.
This is not Tiger Woods’ last great moment.
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Whether Tiger Woods wins another major - or the four necessary to surpass Jack Nicklaus - is anyone’s guess, but for the time being, the golfing world seems to have righted itself. Not in the knowledge that Woods will dominate as he once did - the depth of the average field will ensure that is an impossibility - but in the knowledge that Tiger is back, and that when the red is worn on a Sunday afternoon at a major, the rest of the field ought to be very wary, if not doomed.
For a now-43 year old Woods, who has never sought for anything other than perfection, this win doesn’t mean the end of any movie, the fading into any sunset. If you don’t believe me, ask Mother Nature herself.
Augusta National Golf Club, sensing impending and inevitable inclement weather on Sunday afternoon, grouped players in threesomes and sent them out so much earlier that the final grouping of Woods, Finau, and Molinari started at 9:20 a.m. local time.
So by the time Woods tapped in his two-footer for bogey on 18 at around 2:40 p.m., cementing history, the sun was not even thinking of setting on the patrons at Augusta National, nor on Woods as he slipped comfortably into his fifth green jacket.
There was plenty more golf to play.