McEwan: Andy Murray has a book. Tiger Woods should take a leaf from it.

It doesn’t take much to make me cry.

Forrest Gump visiting Jenny’s grave. Maximus getting reunited with his wife and son in the afterlife at the end of Gladiator. The bit in Terminator 2 when Arnie sacrifices himself and raises a defiant thumb as he sinks into vat of molten steel. When people post movie spoilers.

The waterworks are seldom far away.

Over the last 20 or so years, I’ve shed an unhealthy amount of tears watching Sir Andrew Barron Murray OBE. I can’t help it nor am I ashamed of it. The guy came from a wee Scottish town, carried the weight of an entire nation’s (unfeasibly high) hopes on his shoulders, and became the best in the world at the expense of arguably the three greatest tennis players of all time. He is, by any estimation, a legend.

When he broke down on Centre Court after losing the Wimbledon final to Roger Federer in 2012, my lip wobbled like a poorly built suspension bridge. Twelve months later, when he finally won the ‘big one’, I wiped away tears of joy in my in-laws’ front room. When I first saw him play in the flesh – during a Davis Cup tie in Glasgow in 2016 – I had a lump in my throat the size of an avocado.

And last night, as he took his final bow, I ugly cried like no man has ugly cried before. Even Tobey Maguire would have been like “ewww!”

What can I say? The guy’s my hero. And now it’s all over.

Injuries, of course, have expedited his decision. Murray played 653 matches in the eight years between 2008 and 2016 and a little over 200 in the eight years since then. Who knows how many more slams he might have won had it not been for a succession of surgeries and setbacks. And whilst few would argue that the time is right for him to call it a day, that has also been true for several years.

A few months ago, a reporter – who has covered almost every serve of the Scot’s career – drew widespread condemnation, and the wrath of Murray himself, when he suggested the former world No.1 was doing damage to more than just his body by continuing to persevere.

“At what point does bravely soldiering on start to damage his legacy?” he wrote.

“Tarnishing my legacy?” replied Murray. “Do me a favour. I will keep fighting and working to produce the performances I know I’m capable of.”

If all this sounds familiar, golf fans, that’s because it should. You could quite easily substitute the name ‘Andy Murray’ with ‘Tiger Woods’ and the circumstances wouldn’t be all that different.

Both are brilliant but bionic men. They are amongst the greatest to ever play their respective sports – if you think either’s not, then that speaks more to your intellectual dishonesty than anything else – and both will likely be plagued by frustratingly unknowable ‘what ifs’ long into retirement.

The big difference between the pair is that one has surrendered to the inevitable whilst the other refuses to quit.

Countless column inches have been devoted to why Woods should hang up the clubs. For every one person who is prepared to say it out loud, plenty more think it quietly.

During last month’s Open Championship, the 15-time major champ neatly side-stepped perfectly fair observations made by Colin Montgomerie to lob a mean-spirited jibe back at the Scotsman – a clever piece of deflection that went unnoticed by almost all who heard it at the time.

The fact is that no true golf fan wants Tiger to retire. That will be a sad day for the sport, much like today is a sad day for tennis. But it is legitimate to wonder why he continues to battle on. Does it speak to his courage or his recklessness? Is he inspirational or arrogant? Does he really believe that he can still compete with players who are younger and fitter than him? If so, what recent evidence can he point to that sustains him with that conviction? And if he doesn’t believe he can win, then what’s he trying to accomplish?

From missing only one cut in 39 major starts between the 1996 US Open and the same event a decade later, Woods has missed 12 of his last 23, with a pair of WDs thrown in for good measure.

He is without a top-20 in the events that have defined his career – and will continue to do so in perpetuity – since his extraordinary victory at Augusta National in 2019.

Fans that used to flock to be wowed by him now gather for what? To encourage? To cheer? To rubberneck? To see him one last time?

The sands of time are fallen and vanishing, but Woods remains recalcitrant, stoic, belligerent almost. It’s as though he has become so conditioned to winning, that he can’t process losing.

But this is a fight he can’t win. He cannot defeat the inevitable. All he can do is postpone it. And, rightly or wrongly, that’s what he seems doggedly determined to do. It’s hard to know whether that’s admirable or pitiful. Resolve is an impressive thing, but it ceases to be a quality when it segues into recklessness.

Besides anything else, it’s sad that there’s a new generation of golf fans who will only ever know Tiger as “that guy who was great before my time but who I can only remember missing cuts”.

That’s a finality about retirement that is horrible. In the time it takes to press down the pen nib and leave a full-stop, everything changes. But it’s inescapable. Father Time always wins.

You can rage, rage against the dying of the light all you want. At some point, you will have no option but to go, gently or otherwise, into that good night.

Andy Murray has accepted that. Maybe Tiger Woods should, too.

When he does, yes, there will be tears.

There always are.

—

Michael McEwan is the 2023 PPA Scotland ‘Columnist of the Year’ and ‘Writer of the Year’

Michael McEwan is bunkered's Head of Content and has been part of the team since 2004. In that time, he has interviewed almost every major figure within the sport, from Jack Nicklaus, to Rory McIlroy, to Donald Trump. The host of the multi award-winning bunkered Podcast and a member of Balfron Golfing Society, Michael is the author of three books and is the 2023 PPA Scotland 'Writer of the Year' and 'Columnist of the Year'. Dislikes white belts, yellow balls and iron headcovers. Likes being drawn out of the media ballot to play Augusta National.

Head of Content