Tiger Woods’ 80th PGA Tour victory celebration needed to be delayed as he and some of his closest friends on Tour were immediately shipped to France to compete in the biennial Ryder Cup matches.
While there undoubtedly was a subdued party on Team USA’s charter flight, Woods hosted the official victory celebration at his restaurant, The Woods Jupiter, on Saturday night in Jupiter, Florida.
Among the pros to celebrate alongside TW were Justin Thomas and Rickie Fowler, two of those chiefly responsible for lighting the fire under the 14-time major champion during his recovery from back surgery.
Tiger repeatedly mentioned practice sessions and contests that he’d take part in with Rickie and JT during his climb back, so it’s fitting that two of Tiger’s biggest supporters on Tour took advantage of their role in the process and had shirts mocked up that paid homage to the 2016 Ryder Cup edition that read “MAKE TIGER GREAT AGAIN.”
Naturally, JT and Rickie waited until Woods’ official celebration to bust out the “I MADE TIGER GREAT AGAIN SHIRTS.”
“Felt like a great night to break in the new shirts,” Thomas wrote on Instagram. “Fun night celebrating TW’s win in Atlanta! Us players and especially the game is golf is happy to have you back and healthy old man! Here’s to some battles in the future.”
The backstory to the shirts came from Bob Harig of ESPN.com. Prior to the weekend at Hazeltine in 2016, Zach Johnson outfitted all 12 U.S. players in shirts with the slogan emblazoned upon them. When the time was right, each of the 12 unzipped the top of their red, white and blue onesies — yes, onesies — to reveal the shirt.
“I just want to pay tribute to one of our assistant captains,” Johnson said. “A man who has done so much for this game.”
“I thought it was awesome,” Woods said. “It goes to show you the team bonding that we had, the team unity. I’ve been out of the game. I’ve been hurt. For them to come together and do something like that, it unified all of us. It was great.”
