CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Even at Augusta National, golf’s Eden, no one expected Tiger Woods to return from championship exile in such implausible and unequaled triumph.
Woods’ one-stroke victory Sunday at the Masters came on a course whose every bed of pine straw, each colorized creek and pond, and every single green-dyed fairway divot he knew by heart. If ever he was going to win another major – and this was his 15th, second only to Jack Nicklaus’ 18 – it would probably be through a combination of the smaller Masters field and his hard-won local knowledge of Augusta.
That, however, does not give proper credit to Woods’ tie for sixth at the British Open last year or to his victory in last year’s Tour Championship, his first on the PGA Tour since the Bridgestone Invitational in Akron in 2013.
Eldrick Tont Wood – at 42 with a surgically fused back, after fearing as recently as two years ago that he would never play golf again, in the wake of all the physical and psychological torments of injury and scandal – is, incredibly, back to where he burst onto the scene in 1997. He won the Masters at age 20 by 12 shots then, demonstrating with the victory exactly how fully he was capable of dominating golf.
His victory Sunday, the 81st of his career, one fewer than the record held by Sam Snead (and set in a vastly less competitive era), brought with it both symmetry and imbalance.
In Woods' predatory red shirt that he always wears on Sundays, golf's winning day, he looked the same as a generation ago, until he doffed his cap to show a hairline that might not have been put to rout, but that is certainly in strategic retreat.
In the outsized dimensions of what the victory means in the lore of the game, only Nicklaus’ astonishing sixth Masters victory 33 years ago compares to it. It is one more green jacket than Woods owns. It also came by a lone stroke in 1986 when Nicklaus was 46.
Just as Nicklaus had done then with a near hole-in-one on Sunday on the par-3 16th hole, Woods took a two-shot lead there with an approach shot fed into the contour of the green and rolled in a seeing-eye curve toward the hole. His birdie putt was a formality.
That let him to "plod," in his term for his final round of 2-under-par70, to the victory with a bogey on the final hole.
As in 1997, Woods was surrounded by family and friends at his moment of triumph. His father Earl died in 2006 of the heart problems that made his presence in 1997 problematic and yet that ended with father and son exchanging hugs after the 18th hole.
A generation later, it was his mother Kultida, who hugged her son.
Always demonstrative on the course, Woods played the final round with barely a hint of emotion, with none of the uppercuts, fist pumps and finger pointing at the obedient ball as it fell into the hole. Only his jaw, constantly working a stick of chewing gum, lent animation to his stone face.
That was true, at least, until his bogey-five on 18 caused the massive gallery to erupt and Woods to scream into the din his own celebratory cry.
It could have been made up of a lot of things – relief, fist-shaking joy, redemption, reclamation and acclamation. It was proof positive that the unextinguishable Tiger is still burning bright.
Bill Livingston is a retired Plain Dealer sports columnist.