As unlikely as Tiger Woods ever winning another Green Jacket or major is, he remains a storyline that golf is clinging to.
For the second straight year, the Masters will tee off without Woods in the field. Woods hasn’t completed four rounds at the Masters since 2022. But there was a brief moment earlier this year where Brandel Chamblee admits he was thinking about one more comeback.
Chamblee joined the latest episode of Barstool Sports’ Fore Play podcast to preview the Masters. During the interview, Chamblee was asked about Woods’ future and he thought back to watching the 15-time major champion’s January performance in the inaugural season of TGL.
“His ball speed was 176 and he was pushing off his right foot,” Chamblee said. “We’re not supposed to cheer in the press box, I get that. But we’re talking about Tiger Woods. We’re talking about the most animated, in my view the greatest player of all time possibly coming back…and I couldn’t help but get a little excited about it. I have never seen him swing that good since his most recent accident. The news of him tearing his Achilles was not a good day for golf. There’s nothing that gets the golf world more excited than the possibility of Tiger Woods coming back and playing a golf tournament. Nothing.
“Everything he did was so exciting,” Chamblee continued of Woods. “He made the job so easy. Here’s your story tonight, here’s your breakdown, you could just put him up there chipping and you’d get a great rating. And you realize once he sort of shuffled off the competitive coil week in and week out, it’s not a knock on the current group of players, it’s just that we’re all still having a Tiger Woods hangover. Because we just got to watch Babe Ruth. We just got to watch Sandy Koufax.”
Brandel Chamblee noted Tiger Woods has already successfully came back enough times from injury or off-course matters in his career, and it’s becoming more farfetched to expect him to do it again. Farfetched might even be an understatement when Woods tries to return at 50 years old after suffering a ruptured Achilles.
As long as Woods keeps preparing for majors, fans will keep hoping and rooting for the possibility to see him string four days of greatness together one last time. The prolonged Tiger Woods hangover has undoubtedly made it harder for others to break through as the faces of golf. But if Woods is on the course, he will always be the biggest attraction in the sport.
