Can golf do without its Tiger Woods emblem?

• While he was almost lost for golf, Tiger Woods will line up this Thursday at the Augusta Masters, 13 months after a very serious car accident.

• The "Tiger" returns to Georgia, where he won his 15th and last Major, in 2019.

• Despite his 46 years and his physical problems, Woods remains essential in a discipline where no one seems likely to compete with him, both in terms of prize list and charisma.

The Basque Jon Rahm is still not returned.

“I have never seen so many people around the greens during his training,” said the world No. 2 on Tuesday, two days before the start of the Augusta Masters.

On Sunday, a mass of enthusiasts gathered in the sultry southern United States, around the 973rd player on the planet, 46 years old.

Despite an unworthy ranking and a body like Dr Maboul, Tiger Woods, back after more than 13 months of absence, has lost none of his incredible magnetism.

Its aura always goes far, far beyond that of the competition and even the hushed world of greens and fairways.

Passed very close to the amputation of the right leg after a terrible road accident, on February 23, 2021, the prophet returned (almost) as if nothing had happened to the scene of his last miracle: in 2019, Woods had won his 15th Grand Slam title on the legendary Georgia course, eleven years, four back operations and a lot of setbacks after the 14th.

From Barack Obama to Donald Trump, via Serena Williams, Magic Johnson and Tom Brady, the entire American political and sports elite had hailed the incredible feat of the Californian, who seriously claims to be ready to do it again this year.

“I don't show up at a tournament if I don't think I can win it,” Woods trumpeted Wednesday at a press conference, when formalizing his participation in the Augusta Masters.

“If he can last until 55 or 60 years old”

Nobody dared to contradict his Majesty, and especially not his colleagues of whom, for the most part, he is the idol of youth.

“I find it hard to believe that he will perform, assumes for his part Patrice Barquez.

But the fact that he is present at Augusta is already fabulous.

For golf, it must not stop.

If it can last up to 55 or 60 years, even if it doesn't shine..."

The founder of the event company Golf Consulting has long been the agent of the best French pros (Thomas Levet, Grégory Havret, Victor Dubuisson) for the French branch of IMG, the American agency which oversaw Woods' career.

In more than 30 years in the industry, he witnessed the end of the Jack Nicklaus era, the finest record in his discipline (18 Majors straddling the 60s, 70s and 80s), then saw the UFO tumble in the mid 1990s.

“He is the first athlete to reach the billion dollar mark in earnings, recalls Patrice Barquez (52), also a TV consultant.

With his talent, his skin color, he broke all the codes and brought our discipline out of ourselves.

And sportingly, for ten or twelve years, he crushed golf even though there were quality players opposite, like Phil Mickelson or Ernie Els.

When he is present at a tournament, everything is different, even on the PGA Tour, the biggest circuit in the world.

As soon as he is there, even if he does not perform, it is no longer the same tournament.

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A Federer, but without Nadal or Djoko

The 2018 Ryder Cup, in Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, illustrates these words.

The American lost four out of four games and precipitated the defeat of the United States against Europe.

But for three days, the French public and the cameras only had eyes for him.

His influence could bring him closer to a Roger Federer in tennis, except that he has never had opponents of the size of Rafael Nadal or Novak Djokovic over time.

Another difference, Robert and Lynette, the parents of the Swiss, did not bring their son on TV sets from the age of two, in order to expose his fledgling gifts.

While Earl Woods (who died in 2006) dragged his son Eldrick Tont (his real names) aka Tiger on the

in 1978, with a golf bag far too heavy for his then frail shoulders.

His father, this herald

18 years later, the prodigy, who had just turned pro, was voted sportsman of the year by the prestigious magazine

, to which the father, an African-American former lieutenant-colonel of the American army, had dropped a few sentences of an incredible grandiloquence.

"Tiger will do more than any other man in history to change the course of humanity..." Or again, still about his son, whose mother is of Thai origin: "He is the bridge between the East and the West.

He is the chosen one.

He will have the power to influence the nations.

The world is just beginning to taste its power.

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Raised to mark history, carried from the start by the global commercial power of Nike, Tiger Woods will end up falling from his pedestal one night in November 2009, with a car accident and marital breakdown against a backdrop of adultery in worldview.

He will get up, then fall, then get up… But, even stuck at the bottom of the hole, his name has remained synonymous with his sport.

Too bad for Jordan Spieth, Rory McIlroy, Brooks Koepka or Collin Morikawa, confined despite their merits to magazines and sites of specialists in the little white ball with holes.

“World golf cannot do without Tiger Woods,” says Patrice Barquez, according to whom the icon's retirement will be a “terrible” moment for the discipline.

 “There are good youngsters, but they don't even come close to his ankle.

I don't see a player with the potential to be so charismatic and so sportingly strong.

Even for neophytes, this sport is still represented by Tiger Woods.

It's good that he's coming back, it'll last a little longer.

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Yes, but how long, in a discipline where the elite is getting younger and more athletic, while Cypress's Robocop is patching up his bruised body again and again?

"I love competition, and as long as I can compete at the highest level, that I feel like I can still win, I will play," Woods told reporters Tuesday.

But if I feel like I can't, then you won't see me anymore.

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Nicklaus won in Augusta at the same canonical age

"I think he would not have come without having in mind the idea of ​​winning", added Jack Nicklaus, the other legend of golf, who was like his heir 46 years old when he put on his sixth and last jacket. green of winner of the Masters in Augusta, in 1986. That said, (improbable) victory or not on Sunday, that will not change anything to the imprint already left by the claws of the "Tiger".

“What he has done for this sport is monumental, released his compatriot Justin Thomas (world No. 1 in 2018) in early March, relayed by

.

It does not even transpose into words as its influence is immense.

Words spoken on the occasion of the induction of Tiger Woods into the Golf Hall of Fame, of which he remains more than ever the essential headliner, even at the twilight of his career.

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