Tiger's decline is hard to watch, but he's found that spark of old before

Tiger Woods had barely turned professional when he first took umbrage at something Colin Montgomerie said.

As a 21-year-old playing in his first Masters as a pro in 1997, Woods was paired with the 34-year-old for the third round. Montgomerie was asked about the phenom and noted - not unreasonably - that Woods' inexperience might be a problem on the weekend of a major championship.

Woods shot 65, nine strokes better than Montgomerie on the day, and proclaimed to take extra satisfaction from dusting his playing partner after what was said.

All these years later, the major championship count reads: Woods 15, Montgomerie 0.

So perhaps it's not surprising that Woods can still get a little spiky when Montgomerie utters his name.

This time around, Montgomerie said in a recent TV interview that he thinks it's time Woods retire. He pointed out that the aura around Woods had long since faded, and that his latest comeback after horrific injuries from a 2021 car crash didn't seem like much fun at all.

At last month's U.S. Open, Montgomerie said, "(Woods) did not seem to enjoy a single shot and you think, 'What the hell is he doing?'"

Woods responded in his pretournament presser at Royal Troon for this week's Open Championship that as a past champion of the event, he's exempt until he's 60 years old.

"(Montgomerie's) not a past champion, so he's not exempt," Woods said. "So he doesn't get the opportunity to make that decision. I do."

Me-ow.

And yet, not unlike his comments about inexperience made 27 years ago at Augusta, Montgomerie had a point. It wasn't unusual for a first-year pro to falter on the Saturday of a major. And Tiger doesn't seem to be enjoying the thrill of the chase anymore.

The most recent stretch of Woods' career, after returning from an accident in which his right leg was essentially reassembled, has been exceedingly grim. Over two-plus PGA TOUR seasons, he's played nine official events and finished all four rounds in three of them: the 2022 Masters (47th), last year's Genesis Invitational (45th), and this year's Masters (60th). He's missed the cut three times and withdrawn three times. For a guy who once made 142 consecutive cuts over seven-plus seasons, the difference is particularly stark.

Even his good weeks have been hard to watch: Woods' four weekend rounds at Augusta over this time have gone 78-78-82-77, as he literally limps home, worn out by the toll of walking 72 holes. He's looked at times more like a cyclist trying to push himself to endure an alpine climb than he does a golfer trying to finish a round while someone carries his bag.

Woods acknowledged from the start of his latest comeback that this is his reality: a body that may not be able to bear the rigors of tournament golf, even with a schedule that's down to majors and not much else.

And yet he's also said, and repeated it again at Troon, that he wouldn't play unless he thought he could win. As crazy as it is to imagine relative to the power game of Peak Tiger, he may even be right about his chances on the Open links, where he can bunt it around, try to get a lot of roll on the rock-hard fairways, and basically play classic old-man golf.

The counterpoint to that: there's so far been zero evidence that he could do that for four consecutive days, no matter how much various practice-round partners gush that at times he can look like the Tiger of old.

Which is why it bears wondering: If Woods doesn't look reborn in Scotland, how much more of this he is willing to do?

Most sports have a way of forcing faded greats from no longer competing on ceremony. Team games don't allow the luxury of a creaking icon, because it's unfair to everyone else. But there's room in a small field for a guy just trying to recapture his former glory, if only for a week. As Woods noted when he got properly stroppy with Monty, he could keep doing this for a while. Not only does he have those major exemptions, the PGA TOUR granted special exemptions to its big-money, small-field "signature" events to anyone who has 80 career wins. Woods, with 82, is the only person who qualifies.

Woods also knows something about comebacks. For more than a decade, he went through injury to recovery to "Tiger is back" cycles repeatedly - along with a very public marriage breakup - and often looked close to regaining his major-winning swagger. Then his body would break down again.

Suddenly, when no one was really buying the comeback story anymore, Woods won the 2019 Masters, a throwback bit of magic that looks more like an outlier now than it did then.

Does that experience help explain his desire to keep plugging away? After all, his competitive career had run aground after back, leg, and neck surgeries, with his daughter at one point finding him prone and immobile in their backyard. From that low, he became a major champion again.

The challenges seem much greater now, the odds of overcoming them vanishingly low. But Woods had been written off before, and then come all the way back, triumphant and tearful.

He must know how unlikely he is to do that again. The tiniest sliver of hope, really.

But maybe that's all Tiger needs.

Scott Stinson is a contributing writer for theScore