Tiger Woods isn’t in the field this week at the Zozo Championship, still rehabbing from his sixth surgery on his lower back in the last 10 years. But five years ago, he was coming off a nine-week break after surgery to repair minor cartilage damage in his left knee and despite an inauspicious start, he rattled off a tournament-best 27 birdies and won the inaugural PGA Tour tournament in Japan to tie Sam Snead with 82 career Tour titles.
After the victory the PGA Tour posted a photo of Tiger receiving an autograph from Slammin Sam. They first met when Tiger was six years old and they played a two-hole exhibition at Calabasas Country Club in Southern California.
“I remember hitting the ball into a little creek and playing it out of the water and making bogey. I bogeyed the last and he went par-par,” Woods recalled of the initial encounter. “The only time I ever got a chance to play with Sam Snead, I was 2 down through two.”
But Woods showed enough promise to make a lasting impression on the Hall of Famer, who won his 82nd title at the 1965 Greater Greensboro Open, becoming the oldest player in Tour history to win at age 52.
“If the kid doesn’t burn out, he’ll be the greatest golfer the world has ever seen,” Snead predicted.
In October 2019, some 37 years later, Woods went wire-to-wire at the Zozo Championship in Chiba – his 359th official start – and tied Snead in the record book.
Tiger Woods poses with the trophy after winning the 2019 Zozo Championship at the Narashino Country Club. (Photo by Toshifumi Kitamura/AFP via Getty Images)
To this day, many of the players who competed that week still talk about the galleries, estimated to be 20 deep, to see the man, the myth, the legend, the one and only Tiger Woods.
“The first day we stepped out here, the fans that lined the range and the first hole, I’ve never seen anything like it,” defending champion Collin Morikawa said on Wednesday during his pre-tournament press conference.
“I sat on the first tee with J.T. and Rory and I couldn’t believe how many people were just on the property,” Xander Schauffele recalled. “It felt like a major almost just for the amount of people…it was insane.”
Max Homa couldn’t help but laugh when he watched an Instagram video of the highlights and recap and marveled at how many people were there.
“What it does for a country like Japan who loves golf,” Homa said, “you wait probably all these years to get to see this person come and…
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