During some of the worst moments of Tiger Woods’s astounding fall from the pinnacle of the sporting world, it was sometimes difficult to envision the events of July 22, 2018.

Since that fateful U.S. Thanksgiving weekend in 2009 when the world’s No. 1 golfer ran his Cadillac into a fire hydrant and unleashed a deluge of a scandal that would forever change his life, he had endured a world of well-documented hurt. Beyond the salacious allegations of rampant marital infidelity that led to a divorce settlement estimated at $100 million (U.S.), Woods had lived through multiple back surgeries and a humiliating 2017 traffic stop in which he was found asleep at the wheel of his Mercedes-Benz with a cocktail of what tests later revealed to be five different drugs.

So fast forward to July 22, 2018, a Sunday afternoon in Scotland, the final round of the 147th Open Championship at Carnoustie. And consider how unlikely it was that Woods, after an improbable escape from a pot bunker set him up for an easy par, could somehow finding himself leading a major championship. It was a little more than seven months earlier he’d concluded 2017 ranked 99th in the world. He was more than 10 years removed from his most recent victory at a major championship, the 2008 U.S. Open at Torrey Pines, and more than five years removed from his most recent PGA Tour win. It hadn’t been that long ago that his ailing back had made it difficult to walk, let alone swing.

But Woods’s Open Championship charge sent a buzz through the sports world that reminded everyone of a truth that remains essential. While eight different golfers have assumed the title of world No. 1 since Woods commanded the perch for a record 683 consecutive weeks, no one has ever replaced him as the game’s only true needle mover. It was no coincidence that the Open Championship enjoyed its highest U.S. TV ratings since 2006 — the last of Woods’s three Open championship victories.

Woods didn’t win the Claret Jug; that honour went to Italy’s Francesco Molinari. Woods wasn’t the PGA Tour’s player of the year, either. That was Brooks Koepka, who won his second consecutive U.S. Open in June and his first PGA Championship in August to make it a two-major 2018. But by the time Woods won the Tour Championship in September, he was global golf’s story of the year, the sport’s undisputed champion of water-cooler chatter. And while he’ll turn 43 before the calendar turns to 2019, he’s far from done. In more than one sportsbook, Woods has been installed as the favourite to win the 2019 Masters tournament.

So far only one Canadian has qualified to be in the Masters field. That’d be Mike Weir, the 2003 winner of the green jacket. But that’s hardly a bellwether for the health of Canadian golf. At October’s Safeway Open, the first tournament of what’s essentially the PGA Tour season that will conclude in 2019, there were eight Canadians in the field — a record for a tour event held outside Canada. While world No. 69 Adam Hadwin will be the only Canadian to finish 2018 inside the global top 100, the country has never had a crop of PGA Tour pros filled with so much promise.

Certainly it’s never had a singular LPGA Tour pro to reel off wins as prolifically as Brooke Henderson. When Henderson won August’s CP Women’s Open by four shots over American Angel Yin, she became the first Canadian to win the national championship since Jocelyne Bourassa claimed the crown in 1973. It was a remarkable performance under home-soil pressure: Lorie Kane, the best Canadian on the LPGA Tour for years before Henderson’s emergence, never finished better than tied for third at the event. And a Canadian hasn’t won the men’s version of the national open since Pat Fletcher in 1954.

But Henderson has rarely seemed fazed by a moment. A little more than four years removed from her high-school graduation, Henderson has now won seven LPGA Tour events, including one major at the 2016 PGA Women’s Championship. She needs one more to tie Sandra Post for most career LPGA Tour wins by a Canadian. That would give her eight LPGA Tour wins and a major — which also happens to be the career resume of Weir, only the greatest golfer this country has ever produced.

There was once a debate about whether Woods would overtake Jack Nicklaus’s immortal record of 18 major wins. And for most of a decade the debate was essentially dormant, with Woods stuck at 14 majors through his troubles. Now it’s an article of faith among many golf observers that Woods will spend 2019 adding to his total. Augusta National, where Woods has won four times, has always been one of his pet courses. The rest of 2019’s roster of venues looks Tiger-friendly, too. Bethpage Black, home of May’s PGA Championship, was the site of Woods’s win at the 2002 U.S. Open; he finished tied for sixth at the 2009 U.S. Open there, too. Pebble Beach, the next U.S. Open host, once saw Woods win the 2000 U.S. Open by 15 shots. And while Woods has never played Northern Island’s Royal Portrush, home of the 2019 Open Championship, in competition, he’s won the tournament three times.

A year ago, Tiger Woods was languishing as world No. 1,199. Today many bookmakers in the United Kingdom have him listed at 12-to-1 to win the Claret Jug. Given the extreme highs and lows of Woods’s rise and fall and rise, who could bet with any confidence that any one of the next handful of majors won’t be his?

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