Tiger Woods at 50: Our Scottish colleague details career highs, lows

(Editor's note: Tiger Woods turns 50 today, and while we've chronicled the celebration from facts to moments, we decided to listen to what our Scottish counterpart Nick Rodger felt were one or two highs and lows from a monumental career. Here's what he came up with.)

Tiger cub hits the screens

In October 1978, Tiger Woods was just two. His life in the spotlight, though, was already up and running. He’d never get out of it.

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Woods made his first television appearance on the Mike Douglas Show alongside Jimmy Stewart and Bob Hope and the young Tiger wooed all and sundry with a swing that was as smooth as a box set of Nat King Cole CDs.

By the age of three, Woods could cover nine holes of his local course in 48 blows. It took this correspondent just as many shots to complete that ruddy Toilet Golf game.

Tiger masters Augusta with record romp

It was a procession to a coronation. In fact, Woods’ jubilant parade to a momentous victory in the Masters of 1997 was so regal, he should’ve been carried through the towering pines, dogwoods and azaleas of Augusta National on a sedan chair.

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At a tournament that didn’t invite a black golfer until the year Woods was born – Lee Elder in 1975 - the 21-year-old demolished the field with a ruthless, rousing performance of power, poise, and precision.

Woods broke more records than a rampaging bull at a second-hand vinyl fair and eventually won by a whopping 12 shots from Tom Kite.

On day one, he had wheezed to the turn in 40 but came home in 6-under. That left him lurking three shots behind the early leader John Huston, whose caddie may have been tempted to mutter the words, “Huston, we have a problem.”

Over the next three rounds, Huston and the rest were blown away as Woods roared to the first of his 15 major titles.

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Tiger’s tyrannical rule of men’s golf was underway.

Life's a beach at Woods rules at U.S. Open

The setting was spectacular. So too was the spectacle. The symmetry wasn’t bad either.

In his 100th event as a professional in the 100th US Open at shimmering Pebble Beach, Woods produced an absolute tour de force. This was the year 2000 and, at just 24, he was at the peak of his powers.

A month later, he put on a masterclass at St Andrews to win The Open and complete the career grand slam.

At storied Pebble Beach, meanwhile, rounds of 65, 69, 71 and 67 gave him a 12-under aggregate and a staggering 15-shot victory.

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“What he did at Pebble Beach is still the greatest performance in golf of all time,” suggested Phil Mickelson.

Few would argue with that statement.

Fire hydrant and fall from grace

Who’s a naughty boy then? Tiger Woods, that’s who. On November 27, 2009, Tiger performed a manoeuvre in his car that turned out to be so chaotic, it made the capers of the Wacky Races resemble a dignified cortege at a state funeral.

It was the worst drive of his career. Clattering into a fire hydrant outside his house, in the aftermath of his wife, Elin, discovering that he had been cheating on her, provided the catalyst for an eruption of revelations about sleazy shenanigans, tawdry trysts and lurid liaisons.

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One of the planet’s most successful, richest and recognisable sportsmen had been unmasked as a serial philanderer.

As a list of mistresses as long as Tiger’s, ahem, roll of honor queued up to regale the world with details of all sorts of racy rendezvous, Woods was forced into a squirming, grovelling televised apology in front of an enraptured global audience. And his mother.

“I have let my family down and I regret those transgressions with all of my heart,” said a sombre Woods during this very public show of humiliating contrition. “I am not without faults, and I am far short of perfect.”

It was a mighty fall from grace. But he would recover.

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Despair to the ultimate redemption

That aforementioned TV mea culpa took place in early 2010. Woods may have begun a new decade with a humbling atonement, but he ended it with a triumphant statement as he won the 2019 Masters.

It was a miraculous twist in the Tiger tale. The effects of multiple surgeries down the years left him incapacitated to the point where he had to “roll myself out of bed and take a p*** in a bucket,” while his arrest on suspicion of DUI in 2017 was another grisly low.

His ultimate act of redemption at Augusta, though, completed the kind of astonishing recovery that would’ve had Lazarus taking voluntary redundancy.

Happy 50th, Tiger.

This article originally appeared on Golfweek: Tiger Woods at 50: Our Scottish colleague details career highs, lows