Seeing Red Again

FIVE YEARS SINCE HIS LAST PGA WIN, TIGER WOODS IS ROARING BACK JUST IN TIME FOR AUGUSTA. SERIOUSLY, WHO ISN'T EXCITED?

- Michael Rosenberg

IN THE Los Angeles Angels’ spring training clubhouse this month, the best player in baseball was giddily following a certain PGA Tour star. One day, Mike Trout had almost everybody in the clubhouse watching with him.

The day before North Carolina’s men’s basketball team began its title defense, coach Roy Williams was glued to his smartphone. There was no doubt why. As Williams began one news conference by saying: “Tiger Woods just birdied a hole. He’s the sole leader now at four under par through 16 holes. That’s all I got.”

And in Sonoma, Calif., the son of a longtime Ping Golf employee could barely contain his excitement. David Griffin calls himself a “greatness groupie,” but until last summer, he had a more prominent title: general manager of the Cleveland Cavaliers. Griffin realized that building a team around LeBron James was an assignment of historical significance. “I felt like we were caretaking for the legacy of Babe Ruth,” he says. Griffin understands, as well as anybody, that we are watching the Babe Ruth of golf.

In his last three tournaments, Woods has finished 12th, tied for second, and tied for fifth. Yet he has looked good enough and healthy enough to remind us that there are two kinds of golfers in the world: Tiger, and everybody else.