AUGUSTA, Ga. — From the moment he first saw the long-term forecast, Tiger Woods had to be dreading Saturday at the Masters. He had to be thinking that a test of willpower and pain tolerance would confront him at Augusta National, presenting a far more forbidding challenge than the extra yardage added to the 13th hole.
In fact, his longtime caddie and counselor Joe LaCava saw the moment of truth coming from a mile away. Team Tiger doesn’t often deal in the currency of negative hypotheticals, but with his right leg badly damaged from his single-car wreck in 2021, the 47-year-old Woods has no choice but to acknowledge the storms around him, and to concede that every Masters appearance could be his last.
Including this one.
That approach has liberated confidants such as LaCava to speak the absolute truth. And when the Connecticut native sat with The Post before the tournament, LaCava called Woods’ injury “devastating” and incompatible with the weather moving in.
“My biggest fear going in … is we get a lot of rain and thunderstorms and we get the stop and start, or we get extra holes one day,” LaCava said. “I can’t imagine him going 27-plus holes [in one day] around here. … I’m hoping first and foremost that doesn’t happen.”
Oh, it’s going to happen now. Woods is scheduled to play 29 holes Sunday in an experience that should be positively brutal, even more brutal than the 14 holes Woods endured Saturday in the chilled, windswept rain.
Woods didn’t play those 14 holes. He survived them, barely, especially the seven that he was forced to take on in the third round after his close friend, Justin Thomas, faltered late to help Woods make the cut at 3-over par.
Fans on social media jokingly saw it as JT doing a bromance solid for TW, who made his 23rd consecutive Masters cut to match the record held by Gary Player and Fred Couples. Truth is, Thomas didn’t do his bud much of a favor. Woods went out there after lunch to get eaten alive by the beast Augusta National had become.
But first, when the suspended second round resumed at 8 a.m. on Saturday, Woods needed mere seconds to validate what LaCava and Rory McIlroy had said about the state of his game. The caddie and the competitor both said that Woods’ power and precision were good enough to contend for a sixth green jacket if only he could ride a cart.
With no cart in sight at Amen Corner, Woods stood on the 12th tee in a cutoff vest over long sleeves and lashed a beautiful tee shot right over the flagstick to four feet. Woods takes forever in the morning to loosen up his surgically altered body, and yet he conquered one of the most daunting shots in major championship golf with his very first swing.
And then he pulled his birdie putt in an amateurish way, signaling the struggles to come.
Woods managed to advance to Round 3 despite his bogey-bogey finish and, though he equaled that Masters record, maybe that wasn’t what his leg would’ve preferred. This was old-school AFC Championship game weather in Foxborough, Mass., not Masters weather in Augusta, Ga. It felt like it was in the 30s during the morning, and the slightly warmer afternoon temperatures brought no relief.
The sideways rain made sure of that. Woods was fighting those conditions as valiantly as he could, while his leg was fighting the famously hilly course and — even when dry and firm — one of the most difficult walks in golf. It was a lost tee-to-green cause.
Wearing a ski cap over his hat as he started on the back nine, Woods bogeyed two of the first five holes before everything unraveled around him. His third shot on the par-5 15th — where he made his controversial illegal drop after his ball hit the pin and plunged into the water 10 years ago — landed on the green and spun back into the pond en route to a double bogey.
On the 16th, where he has made a lot of magic, Woods looked on in disgust when his ball made a beeline for the drink again. His second straight double left him at 9-over, dead last among the 54 players who made the cut.
As he leaned over to retrieve his ball, Woods paused in apparent pain, and slowly reached into the 16th cup. He headed to the 17th tee with the hobble of an 85-year-old man.
“I’m very lucky to have this leg,” Woods said the other day. “It’s mine. Yes, it had been altered and there’s some hardware in there, but it’s still mine. It’s been tough and will always be tough.”
But no tougher than it is now. When the weather horn blew at 3:15 p.m. Saturday to finally call it a day, Woods all but staggered off the course under an umbrella carrying his TGR foundation logo.
“I don’t know how many more I have in me,” he said this week.
Before Tiger Woods starts counting, he will be tested Sunday as never before. He will be asked to survive a 29-hole marathon that he never wanted to sign up for.
