British Open 2024: Tiger Woods fired back at Colin Montgomerie, but Monty knows the truth
TROON,Scotland — Only a chosen few are awarded “The Stop.” It is both earned and conferred, and always cashed in at the Swilcan Bridge. The legend makes his way over the crossing, pauses, perches his leg up on the stone ledge, turns away from the Old Course and toward the fans to his right and behind him, then back to the town of St. Andrews and to the people craning their necks from pubs and hotel windows to say they saw it, and waves. The Stops of yesteryear are run annually on Open broadcasts and pictures of The Stop are plastered in clubhouses across the world, because The Stop matters, a graceful transition of a golf legend from the pangs of now into the gloss of the past.
Tiger Woods was bestowed The Stop in 2022. It made sense; he was nine over through 35 holes, 20-something shots behind the leader and miles from the cut. He was just 46 years old, but his return from a savage car accident raised plenty of questions about an already tenuous future, and with the R&A likely deviating from its tradition of hosting the Open at the St. Andrews every five years it was unclear when the Auld Gray Toon would host again … and what type of shape Woods would be in when that time came.
Woods is a student and historian. He is well aware of The Stop. What it means, to himself and to others. Over the past decade, he had preached a cognizance of the finish line. And yet, knowing what was ahead, Woods glided over the most famous bridge in golf, stride unbroken. He did raise his hat to the heavens, a concession made by his brain, but his legs were taking direction from his heart. At the 150th Open, Tiger Woods was given The Stop. He kept walking.
“I hope people remember Tiger as Tiger was, the passion and the charismatic aura around him,” Colin Montgomerie said in an interview with The Times of London last week. “There is none of that now. At Pinehurst [for the U.S. Open], he did not seem to enjoy a single shot and you think, ‘What the hell is he doing?’ He’s coming to Troon, and he won’t enjoy it there either.” Montgomerie later added, in response to Woods’ comments last month that his competitive days may be numbered, “Aren’t we there? I’d have thought we were past there. There is a time for all sportsmen to say goodbye, but it’s very difficult to tell Tiger it’s time to go. Obviously, he still feels he can win. We are more realistic.”
To various extents for the last decade, similar eulogies have been made about Woods’ career—only for Woods to prove how much life he has left. Perhaps that’s partly why Monty’s remarks made the rounds. But as blunt as Montgomerie was, the collective response has been just as telling, because there has been little, if any, rebuttal. Montgomerie said what we all know to be true:
In sports, everything ends badly. Otherwise, it wouldn’t end.
Badly is a sober assessment of Woods’ golf as of late. More than as of late: Since winning the 2019 Masters he has failed to finish inside the top 20 at a major and has either missed the cut or withdrawn in five of the last seven. He’s played four rounds of an official tournament just three times in the last four seasons. This is partly an upshot of the fact he hardly plays at all. The last time Woods teed it up at an event that wasn’t a) a major, b) his Genesis Invitational or c) a silly-season event was in the summer of 2020. That is the profile of a ceremonial figure … which Woods was at the U.S. Open, in the field thanks to a special exemption from the USGA. He fought, but Pinehurst painfully illustrated it was a test he could not pass. Golf pounds its chest about its meritocratic fields but Woods, in his current form, is more celebrity than competitor.
