Over the years Woods asked Nicklaus, more than once, what he was thinking at the time. Woods never got a really good response from Nicklaus, but according to his book Unprecedented, this is how he thinks: “He did what it took to put himself in a position to win the Masters. He was not thinking of victory. He was just thinking about the shot and what he had to do. He did not catch himself. “ Thirty-six years later, Woods is 46 years old, a month older than Nicklaus when he became the oldest man to win the tournament. And of course he plans to break that record. No one, not even Woods himself, gave him the opportunity to do so after the car crash last February, when he lost control of his SUV while spinning twice as fast on a section of mountain road outside of Los Angeles. Nobody even thought he would make it here this year. “I never left the hospital bed to see my living room for three months.” After that, he was still in a wheelchair, with crutches, in and out of the operating room, screwed to his leg “with rods and plates and screws.” Woods is warming up for this year’s Masters at Augusta National. Photo: Tannen Maury / EPA “To say then that I would be here to play and talk to you would be very unlikely.” He did not wake up that first day in the hospital with the idea of ​​returning here. Then it was 50-50 if they had to amputate his leg. Instead, Woods made the recovery one step at a time. Like Nicklaus, he does what he has to do day in and day out to reach a position where he can win the Masters once again. He is convinced that he can do it too. And because it’s Tiger Woods, who’s wrong? He still does not have as much mobility and never expects to do it again. and it hurts “every day”. But here it is anyway. “It’s a matter of what my body can do the next day and recovery. “That’s the hard part,” Woods explained. Subscribe to The Recap, the weekly email with authors’ choices. “It’s painful because simple things I would normally do now take a few hours here and a few hours there to prepare and then finish.” The idea of ​​just walking the path for four consecutive days is scary. “It is up to me to endure all the pain” and his medical team to help him manage his addiction. “How will I get rid of all the swelling and recover for the next day?” “But I feel that I can still do it and I feel that I still have the hands to do it. the body moves quite well “. This is a man who won the US Open in 2008 while suffering two fractures due to pressure and a torn anterior cruciate ligament, who won the 2019 Masters two years after undergoing spinal fusion surgery. “I have been in worse situations and I have played and won tournaments. Now I have not found myself in situations like this where I had to endure what I will try and endure, this is a different challenge. “But the back surgery and all the things I had to play in the past, these are all things I can count on to achieve the points I achieved.” Woods once said that his victory here in 2019 was like his Everest and that, after climbing it once, he did not feel the need to do it again. His injuries gave him a mountain to climb and a new reason to try to do so as well. Woods did not just lose control of his car that night. he also lost control of his career, and for a time the question of whether he could ever play, fight, win, again, was taken out of his hands. Something that would be difficult for anyone, but it must have been completely unbearable for a man who spent his whole life defying the limits that other people tried to set for him. “I do not know how many more years I can do this,” he once said. But as long as he can, he will do it, no matter how much it hurts.