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The before and after of his career

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First off, I think Tiger Woods’s current situation has a lot to do with how hard he’s been on his body throughout so many years of competition. That being said, I also think that there’s a turning point that marks a before and after in his career: his father’s death. He instilled values and principles of excellence in Tiger and worked on helping him manage his life and his profession, to be Number 1, and he was someone Tiger always turned to in that sense…

Hopefully he’ll come back to compete and fight to win tournaments. I think what Yang did in the 2009 PGA also changed things in a way. Yang made us all believe that he could be beat. All that, together with his physical problems and issues outside his career, have taken a toll on him.

But golf needs him to come back. We need to see Tiger going head to head with the top three, McIIroy, Spieth and Day. Imagine what a Sunday at Augusta would be like, for example, with Tiger in the mix together with one, two or all three of them. I think I would hop on the first flight out to see it.

I had the luck of playing with him for the first and the last time in Dubai. His close, friendly nature caught my attention, how easy it was to talk to him about everything…But of course, we came out in 30º place, any other time I think it would have been different. On the 10th hole in the Emirates, par 5, he was 215 meters from the flag, which was short and to the left, and he hit a 4 iron high up into the sky, around seventy meters up… If it were me in that situation, with the short flag, and I hit an iron, in the best case scenario I would aim for the ball to land on edge of the green, but his ball landed right before the flag just one and a half meters away. I remember what my caddie and I said to each other: yup, this is what happened in 1997 time after time…

There’s something I have really clear: without Tiger, golf wouldn’t be where it is now in the sports world. I don’t have specific stats, but we could be talking about the industry that moves the game of golf as the second most significant in the sports world and that is primarily thanks to Tiger Woods.