Woods turns 40, still three wins shy of Snead’s 82

Age 40 saw Nicklaus win two majors in 1980 at the U.S. Open and the PGA.

Born in Cypress, California on December 30, 1975.

For the white male of the species, the kind of casual racism and prejudice that confronted Woods as a boy is just an abstraction, impossible to replicate or even to imagine. He was nicknamed “Tiger” after a Vietnamese soldier, a friend to his father in Vietnam.

Woods made 11 starts last season, had four missed cuts, one withdrawal, three rounds in the 80s and a 71.988 scoring average.

Ended that year with PGA Tour victories at the Las Vegas Invitational and Walt Disney Classic.

Winning eight times on the PGA tour by itself counts as a heck of a career.

Laughs aside, most players with 40 in their rearview mirrors considered it more speedbump than roadblock. He still envisions himself “playing golf at the highest level and winning tournaments and major championships”, in his column posted on his website. One has to have won a tournament in the year prior to receive an invite to The Hyundai Tournament of Champions.

Though he has not eclipsed the 18 Grand slam record of Jack Nicklaus and 82 PGA tour victories of Sam Snead, he will mark the milestone, of a phenomenal career, proud of his achievements and legacy.

I consider myself fortunate to have covered many of his victories, including 10 of the 14 majors he won.

The former World Number One has dropped to 416th in the World Rankings.

Is this would he would have expected 20 years later?

The oldest player to achieve major glory was Julius Boros, who was aged 48 when he held off Bob Charles during the 1968 US PGA Championship to win his third and final major title. To date, he has spent a record 683 weeks at No.1, more than double his nearest rival, Greg Norman (331 weeks).

Mickelson has been a stalwart of the Open, missing the tournament once in the past 22 years, but it took him 20 appearances in golf’s oldest major for him to finally lift the Claret Jug. Within a few years, Zoeller would have another back surgery, then a third, but each time returned to a competitive role.

On Dec. 1, he withdrew from the Chevron World Challenge, a tournament he hosts to benefit his charitable foundation, citing injuries from the crash. In fact, ask some of the game’s senior statesmen about turning 40, and they’re likely to break into what sounds like a Henny Youngman routine.

“It’s interesting to see how the game has changed”, Woods said.

2006 British Open – At Royal Liverpool, Woods won his first major title since the death of his father Earl two months earlier.

I THINK we can agree current world No 1 Jordan Spieth has had a great year. He said he had “a long way to go” in repairing his personal life.

As he turns 40 and, possibly, a bit wiser, it appears this will be the strategy Woods employs going forward. However, he mainly struggled for form throughout the season and in November he was deposed as world number one by Britain’s Lee Westwood after a five-year reign. Nike portrayed his fandom of Woods through its “Ripple” ad, starting with McIlroy watching Woods on TV and ending with the two competing against each other. Only 36 times has a player in his forties won.

Injuries plagued Woods during 2014, and he was sidelined for nearly four months after having a microdiscectomy surgery on his back in March.

The 21-year-old, playing in his first Masters as a professional, won by a record 12 shots over the famed Augusta National to become the youngest victor and the first non-white player to triumph in the year’s first major.

Tiger loses his remarkable record of winning every major he has led after 54 holes, as the unheralded Y. E. Yang pulls off a stunning win at Hazeltine. The lower lumber region is a notoriously brittle part of the golfing anatomy and, with so little research in the area, none can say with confidence how Woods might respond to invasive surgery.