Tiger Woods has experienced some incredible lows to accompany the many highs during his career. Photo / Getty Images
The reaction from many people to the news that Tiger Woods had been involved in a car crash and charged would have been simple: “Oh God, not again”.
The good news is that his local sheriff in Jupiter, Florida, reported that nobody was hurt in the crash on Friday local time.
The bad news was that this situation is so grimly familiar.
This was not the first time that Woods’ car has overturned, or in which he has been arrested on charges of driving under the influence. He just did them both at once on this occasion.
Woods clearly has a problem, and one has to hope that he at least starts by hiring a fulltime driver. But beyond that, Woods is plainly in a mess and his many friends in the game will pray that he can at last sort it.
To hell with him making a competitive comeback at the Masters in two weeks’ time. His biggest challenge is to put himself right.
In 2017, he was arrested on the same charges and the toxicology report revealed a mixture of drugs in his system after he was found, again not far from his home, asleep and slumped over the steering wheel of his vehicle.
Woods eventually pleaded guilty to “reckless driving” and checked into an addiction clinic.
This was not alcohol-related or anything to do with recreational drugs – but simply with the pain-killing prescription medications he felt he required to put up with the crippling agony.
It is an epidemic across the continents and, away from the social media ridicule, was a desperately sad situation.
And as much as the world lauded his remarkable physical comeback from all those back surgeries to win the 2019 Masters, it perhaps overlooked the scale of the mental recovery he had launched from that extreme low point.
Woods had been forced to go through tortuous withdrawal symptoms and then, when the spinal fusion later in 2017 did hand him back a near pain-free existence in which he could play with his children in the backyards of his mansion and, yes, swing the club well enough to win him a 15th major, the miracle seemed complete.
Except, it was not, because once again there were niggling injuries that were compounded by a car crash that could have been even more terrifying than it turned out anyway.
After Woods rolled his SUV in Los Angeles on a February morning in 2021, he was found upside down in a ravine.
Emergency rescue teams cut him out and saved his life, but even then the surgeons feared they would not be able to rescue his right leg. He spent weeks in hospital and that seemed that.
Yet Tiger comes back, that’s what he does, and he somehow appeared at the following year’s Masters – and made the cut.
He did the same in 2023, before being forced to withdraw on the final morning, and again in 2024, before he missed the cut at that year’s Open and bowed out in agony.
More pain, more operations, more of the corporate machine trying to flog this dead horse.
The question for many will now be whether Woods will do his Lazarus trick and play in that first round of the Masters on April 9?
Well, there appears to be no physical damage from this awful crash in Jupiter, at least.
Or will he be wise and decide that, no, he is not nearly fit enough for such a demanding undulating course.
Woods is due at the Masters anyway to open a nearby course he has designed in conjunction with Augusta National.
He has also promised his friend Rory McIlroy to attend his Champions’ Dinner on the Tuesday. He will be there, so why not?
But would he dare face the media and their questions at Augusta?
On the other hand, Woods has a new clothing range to promote, so would he dare sidestep the opportunity that would give Sun Day Red that amount of exposure?
And as the supreme competitor, would he dare forsake another trip around the Masters layout, where his legend was first cast in golf 26 years ago?
All these queries will be asked in the next few weeks and answers will be demanded.
But none of them mean a damn when positioned alongside what should be the overarching concern. Woods must get well again.
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