Five months away from professional competition, and away from the public eye (despite unwillingly being in it,) Tiger Woods returned Thursday with not a splash, but an enormous, cannonball-sized KERPLUNK. \u00a0 “For him to be this sharp, is truly remarkable,” says Scott Maurer. \u00a0He follows “everything Tiger” because it’s in his business interest. \u00a0He owns Millionaire Gallery, and for the 15th Masters in a row, he, his tent and hundreds of pieces of autographed golf memorabilia sit on the busy corner of Washington Road and Berkmans, where the throngs of people lucky enough, or rich enough, to have passes into the Augusta National Golf Club walk by each morning and afternoon. \u00a0His top three sellers are Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer and Tiger Woods, the only three men to wear the green jacket 4 times. \u00a0Maurer is in the daily vortex of Masters evesdropping. \u00a0And today, with Tiger having birdied hole 2 this morning, but following a bogie, back to 4 under par, Maurer says the Tiger buzz is definitely in the air, for his golf game. \u00a0“He’s the #1 player in the world.” \u00a0 \u00a0Woods returned to the golf spotlight Thursday at 1:42, hitting his first drive down the fairway. \u00a0For the first time in his career, he made 2 eagles in one round. \u00a0For the first time in his career, he shot under 70 on opening day at The Masters. \u00a0And for the only time in his life, he returned from perhaps the most spectacular fall from public grace for any sports figure in history with a spectacular record day personally, sitting 2 strokes behind the leader and very much in contention to pull off what almost every other golf champion said would be impossible after that long of a break from competition: \u00a0win The Masters. \u00a0And what astounded Guy Carteng, who drove in from Charleston, South Carolina to walk alongside Woods for a few holes, is how the fans overwhelmingly embraced the new, and declaredly remorseful, Woods. \u00a0 Big applause. \u00a0Repeated shouts of “go Tiger!” \u00a0And an electricity of widespread disbelief of how amazingly well Woods was actually playing. \u00a0“I was shocked,” said Carteng. \u00a0“I turned to the guy next to me and asked him if he was also surprised, and he said, ‘you know, \u00a0America’s all about second chances.” \u00a0 And Maurer knows that a historic weekend here in Augusta will likely mean more sales of any Woods merchandise. \u00a0“If Tiger wins this year and wins his 5th green jacket, no one will remember what he did.” \u00a0Its’ the classic American storyline: \u00a0meteoric rise to the top, incredible fall from grace and then the return to dominance, success and return to idol status. \u00a0So far, Woods has parts 1 and 2 fulfilled.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Five months away from professional competition, and away from the public eye (despite unwillingly being in it,) Tiger Woods returned Thursday with not a splash, but an enormous, cannonball-sized KERPLUNK. \u00a0 “For him to be this sharp, is truly remarkable,” says Scott Maurer. \u00a0He follows “everything Tiger” because it’s in his business interest. \u00a0He owns […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6664,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-521928","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521928","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6664"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=521928"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521928\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=521928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=521928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=521928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}