Tiger Woods’ absence from U.S. Open field signals an end of an era

Look, nobody expected Tiger Woods, still recovering from a ruptured Achilles, to be in the field for next month’s 125th U.S. Open at Oakmont. And it’s stretching belief to the breaking point to think he would be able to compete at a high level even if he were healthy. But it’s still a bit jarring to once again see a qualifying field without Woods’ name in it, and it’s a sign of where golf is headed.

The USGA, which governs the U.S. Open, has the ability to hand out special exemptions — golden tickets if you will — that give recipients a free pass into the field. Given the major’s rigorous qualifying criteria, it’s not surprising that the USGA has handed out only 34 special exemptions since 1966 … the most recent going to Woods last year at Pinehurst.

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Woods is now at the point in his career where he’ll need to rely on special exemptions to get into two of the four majors, despite the fact that he’s won all four multiple times. The Masters and the PGA Championship permit past champions to return as often as they like for the rest of their careers — with the caveat that they might one day be asked to step aside.

The Open Championship recently changed its exemption criteria for past winners; until this year, winners could play in the Open until they turned 60. Now, winners going forward will have five fewer years, and will bid farewell to the Open at age 55, lest they gain entry per one of the qualifying criteria.

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The U.S. Open, however, is the strictest of the four. Past winners get only 10 years of automatic exemptions, and given the length of golf careers, that doesn’t last long. (Proof: Jordan Spieth is already in his last year of automatic past winners’ eligibility. Jordan Spieth. Time moves fast.)

Woods hasn’t won a U.S. Open since his memorable 2008 victory at Torrey Pines. He’s only seen the weekend once in the last 11 U.S. Opens, carding a T21 at Pebble Beach in 2019. Other than that, he’s missed four cuts and missed six U.S. Opens entirely.

Last year marked the first time in his career that Woods was forced to accept a special exemption into the U.S. Open. (He missed the cut.) The special exemption isn’t a backdoor way into the Open — well, it is, technically, but there’s plenty of elite-level precedent for it. Arnold Palmer received five special exemptions, Jack Nicklaus eight. Hale Irwin actually won the 1990 U.S. Open playing on a special exemption; he was 11 years removed from his last U.S. Open victory.

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Despite his vast shadow — and his presence in the newly-formed TGL, the tech-infused indoor golf league he helped create — Woods is indubitably part of golf’s past. That’s tough for the generations of fans who grew up respecting, admiring or idolizing Woods. And it’s difficult for those who saw Woods in his prime to reconcile that image with the weakened, injured Woods of today. It’s not a surprise, not a shock, just a sense of the inexorable crush of time. Not even Woods can outrun that.

Oakmont, this year’s U.S. Open host, doesn’t quite play into the Tiger Woods legend to the degree of other U.S. Open courses. At Oakmont, Woods was a runner-up by a single stroke to Angel Cabrera in 2007, and did not play when Dustin Johnson won in 2016.

It’s been too long since we saw Woods in red and black on a U.S. Open Sunday, and it’s a sorely missed sight.