The 2019 Masters will be forever celebrated as one of the great moments in the history of golf.
Behind the green where 22 years earlier he had hugged his father in celebration, Tiger Woods embraced his family, the culmination of a seemingly endless climb through injury and personal turmoil. A transcendent talent turned global icon had come full circle, basking in triumph again amidst the Georgia pines.
On the course, Woods was his vintage, surgical self, his birdie at 16 sending the patrons at Augusta National into an absolute frenzy. Here are five key numbers to know from Tiger Woods 15th major championship victory at the 2019 Masters.
Entering the 2019 Masters, it was apparent Woods had rediscovered more than a glimmer of his legendary iron play. Woods ranked 3rd on Tour in 2018-19 in Strokes Gained Approach per round, his best performance in that statistic since 2013. That prowess was on full display on his way to green jacket number five.
For the week, Woods would hit 80.6 percent of his greens in regulation, the highest clip in the field. It’s the most GIR hit by an April Masters champion since Tiger hit 83.3% in 2001, the week he completed the Tiger Slam. Even more significant, Tiger led the Masters field in Strokes Gained Approach (1.73), marking the third time in five years that the winner led the Tournament in that key metric. He nearly doubled down on his ball striking when it mattered the most, jumping to 2.87 Strokes Gained Approach in the final round.
At 43, Woods was the second-oldest Masters champion in history, and one of only two players to win a Masters in three different decades (1990s, 2000s, 2010s). Woods had gone 22 years between his first and 15th major championship wins, the second player to have a gap that far between his initial major win and most recent. You can likely guess the other player in this category of two – his final major win came 24 years after winning his first, the 1962 U.S. Open.
The Masters is an annual reminder of one of golf’s great gifts: that it can be played over the course of an entire lifetime. Woods had now won Masters titles in 1997 and 2019 – and the fields in both Tournaments were reflective of how generations can be connected through the game. Woods has Masters wins with players in the field who were born in 1922 (Doug Ford, in the 1997 field) and 1999 (Devon Bling, in the 2019 field), a span of nearly eight decades.
Woods played the par 3s at Augusta National in 4-under for the week, the best performance by a champion in the last eight years. Only twice in Tournament history has the champion played them in better than 4-under for the week: in 1941 and 1965, when the winners were each 5-under. It was a contrast to Tiger's first four Masters wins, when he played the par 3s in a combined score of even par.
The victory moved Woods to 6th in the World Ranking. For a player who has spent more weeks as world number one than any player in history, that isn’t particularly high on the career achievements list. But upon reflection, it was a statistical flashpoint about just how far Woods had come.
Less than 500 days earlier, before Woods teed it up at the 2017 Hero World Challenge, he was ranked 1,199th. At the previous year’s Masters, he had moved back into the top-100 in the World for the first time since March of 2015. His rapid ascent back, a testament to his perseverance, commenced in the most remarkable way possible.
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