Tiger Woods vs Golf - The Greatest Master

For the first 10 of the last 20 years, golf had never seen anything like Tiger Woods. As the winner of 15 majors and 82 PGA Tour events, he holds some of the most elusive and unbreakable records in professional sport but in contrast is probably the most injury prone superstar ever seen. The combination of these two factors (alongside some very overworked surgeons) set-up one of the greatest returns to stardom that sport will ever see. 

At 21, Tiger won his first major at the Masters in 1997 and quickly acended to the number 1 spot on the Official World Golf Rankings a few months later. This would begin a dominant streak of relentless winning that put golf's greatest names to shame. During his opening decade in the sport, Tiger built up 54 PGA Tour event wins before turning 30 in 2006; 36 more than golfing legends Phil Mickelson and Rory McIlroy. He became the only player in PGA tour history to win at the same course on 8 or more occassions, an impressive feat in it's own right. It's even more impressive when you discover Tiger holds this record on 3 separate courses! To really put his greatness into perspective, only 10 players since 1945 had won a major tournament before turning 24. Before 25, Tiger had won 5 majors and had already completed the grandslam; an accomplishment only 12 golfers in history can claim to have completed. 

In my mind, anyone that says Tiger isn't the GOAT of golf is either a major Jack Nicklaus fan or is in very deep denial, but Tiger's GOAT status isn't just limited to golf. He may just possess the greatest list of injuries as well. From 1994-2017, he underwent surgery 9 times and had over 13 serious injuries that all could have resolved in retirement. But for Tiger, it was just adding fuel to the fire. In 2007, he ruptured his ACL whilst competing at the British Open, a somewhat serious injury for any athlete. Despite this, Tiger went on to win 5 of the 6 tournaments he entered that year, all whilst under tremendous amounts of pain. He duplicated this superhuman resolve just a year later, where he won the US Open with 2 stress fractures in his tibia. Unfortunatley for Tiger, the injuries would come thick and fast as he passed the age of 30, and from 2011 he suffered from game stopping back pain spasms. 

2017 was Tiger's darkest hour. He dropped to 1199th in the Official World Golf Rankings after undergoing a spinal fusion to repair over a decade of continual back damage. However, due to the surgery and remarkable recovery he was able to return to golf within the year and thus began his legendary march back to greatness. 

In a little over a year, Tiger marched through tournament after tournament, culminating in his spectacular victory at the 2019 Masters which saw him shoot straight to No.6 in the world; jumping over 1193 world class golfers. He finished the tournament -13, one shot clear of fellow American Xander Schauffele, and completed one of the greatest longterm sporting comebacks of all time. 

Even after being injured through most of the decade, Tiger still remained at the number one spot from 2010-2019 for 103 weeks, the most out of any current golfer, with Rory McIlroy finishing a distant second after being named number one in the world for only 95 weeks (*cough pathetic *cough). If that isn't your definition of pure resolve and GOAT level status, nothing else ever will be, and we can only hope that the greatest golfer of all time can perform another superhuman return from another horrific injury in 2021.