Tiger Woods’ historic comeback victory Sunday at the The Masters Tournament shows the enduring star — and earning — power of a player once dropped by many sponsors because of his problems on and off the golf course.

“It’s crazy to think a 43-year-old who has experienced every high and every low and has just won his 15^th major …. is chasing the same dream as a 3-year-old,” a new Nike ad says.

President Trump announced Monday that he will award Woods the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, “because of his incredible Success & Comeback in Sports (Golf) and, more importantly, LIFE.”

At 43, Woods is the second-oldest winner of the Masters. In 1986 Jack Nicklaus won The Masters for a sixth time when he was 46.

And after Woods’ momentous victory Sunday, multiple sponsors are celebrating his resilience. At the end of the Nike ad, a very young Woods is seen on camera saying: “I’m going to beat Jack Nicklaus.”

Woods now has 15 major wins, compared to 18 for Nicklaus. “I felt for a long time that he was going to win again. … He’s got me shaking in my boots, guys,” Nicklaus told the Golf Channel after Tiger’s victory.

TaylorMade, a golf club manufacturer and another sponsor of Woods, is promoting the hashtag “#NeverDone” – a reference to the player’s longevity.

Tiger last won the Masters Tournament in 2005 – the longest period ever between wins in that tournament. Since then, he’s gone through a high-profile sex scandal and major injuries.

“I had serious doubts after what transpired a few years ago. I couldn’t walk, I couldn’t sit, I couldn’t lay down, I really couldn’t do much of anything,” he told reporters. “Luckily I had the procedure on my back, which gave me a chance at having a normal life. … The body’s not the same as it was a long time ago, but I still have good hands.”

According to Forbes, in 2009 he brought in $105 in endorsements and appearance fees, compared to $37 million in 2017. As Bloomberg noted, many top sponsors such as AT&T, Accenture, Gillette, Gatorade ended their relationships with him following the scandals. TaylorMade is a newer sponsor, as is golf ball manufacturer Bridgestone Golf and drink company Monster Energy.

But Nike, which has been a sponsor since 1996, has stuck by him. And that has turned out to be lucrative.

According to sponsorship analytics firm Apex Marketing Group, the brand exposure that Nike got from Woods during the final round of this tournament was worth more than $22.5 million. They calculated that branding on his bag from Monster Energy and on his golf balls from Bridgestone Golf was also worth more than $1 million total.

The amount of exposure that Woods produced for Nike in the final round is nearly double the $12 million that Apex estimates Nike gained last year from Masters winner Patrick Reed.

That’s largely due to the intense focus the TV broadcast placed on Woods, said Apex president Eric Smallwood. “Pretty much every hole, every time he hit the ball, they were showing him … or the Nike logo,” he told NPR.

Nike has drawn down its relationship with Woods over the years – now concentrating on his apparel rather than balls or clubs.

But Smallwood doesn’t see the company ever dropping him. “I think Nike will stick with him until he stops playing golf, in some capacity. I don’t foresee that ever going away,” he says.

From a branding perspective, he says, Woods’ story has obvious appeal. “This is coming back from not even playing and winning the Masters. It’s got a lot of good story lines to it,” he says, that brands would want to hold onto.

Tournament officials were eagerly touting the moment: “No man in golf has ever been the subject of more interest or speculation than has Tiger Woods. No man in the game has inspired more opinion, and his story is well known.”

A Forbes analysis asks, now that Tiger is on top again, how his branding might change:

“Maybe the most interesting question involving the return of Woods is this: Who will become the first major brand to take a risk on him? And will that open the door to getting Tiger back on top in terms of endorsement deals?”

Woods himself appears introspective. After his first-ever Masters win in 1997, he hugged his father, who died in 2006. This year, he shared an emotional hug with his two children and his mother. He reflected on how this win could change how his kids see him and his place in the professional golf.

“I think the kids are starting to understand how much this game means to me and some of the things I’ve done in the game. Prior to this comeback, they only knew that golf caused me a lot of pain,” Woods told reporters. “We’re creating new memories for them.”

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Tiger Woods won his fifth Masters title on Sunday, marking an incredible comeback from injury and personal hardship that ended a nearly 11-year-long championship drought.

Woods finished the final round of his 22nd Masters appearance 13 under par, winning the tournament by a single stroke over Xander Schauffele, Dustin Johnson and Brooks Koepka, who were tied for second place.

Sunday’s win at Augusta National — where Woods won his first major in 1997 — was his 15th time winning a major. Prior to Sunday, Woods hadn’t won a major championship since his victory at the U.S. open in 2008.

With five Masters titles, he is now just one victory away from tying the record for most Masters wins held by American Jack Nicklaus, who has six. The victory also brought Woods closer to tying Nicklaus’ record of 18 major championships.

The win capped a stunning professional comeback for Woods, who has faced crippling back and leg injuries that led to multiple surgeries and nearly ended his professional golf career. In 2017, he underwent a spinal fusion, his fourth back surgery, with hopes of alleviating the pain.

It was also his first victory at a major since a series of personal troubles that began in 2009 pushed Woods to take a break from the sport.

As the final round of the tournament got off to an early start Sunday morning due to bad weather, it wasn’t clear that Woods would come back from two strokes behind, but he did.

“I was just trying to plod my way along the golf course all day, then all of a sudden I had a lead,” Woods said after his victory. “Coming up to 18, it was just trying to make a five. When I tapped the putt in — I don’t know what I did. I know I screamed.”

As the ball went in, the crowd erupted into applause and chants of “TIGER! TIGER!”

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It happened in a split second, and Vanessa Barker doesn’t remember any of it. She doesn’t remember dropping to the field, nor does she remember how she got hit.

When she came to, she was sitting on the sidelines with an EMT, being evaluated for what turned out to be her first concussion. Over the next two years, she’d suffer another two more while out on the field — hardly what she expected when she decided to start playing quidditch.

Before 2005, quidditch existed only as a creation from the fictional world of Harry Potter — a pastime for witches and wizards on flying broomsticks. But charmed by the game’s allure, students at Middlebury College in Vermont held the first real-life quidditch match, a fast-paced, co-ed, full-contact combination of dodgeball, rugby and basketball.

Nearly a decade-and-a-half later, participation has grown dramatically, with teams sprouting up in communities and college campuses across the country. The sport has its own governing body, U.S. Quidditch, with 134 teams already registered this season and another five to 10 more added each year.

But as teams gather in Texas this weekend for U.S. Quidditch Cup championship, players, coaches and officials are increasingly grappling with how to minimize risk in a game where the potential for injury has become more and more apparent. Many have come to realize it’s not just scrapes and bruises — it’s also broken bones, and for players like Vanessa Barker, repeat concussions.

“If I ever have any others, I’ll have to stop playing,” she said.

The rules of quidditch

The real life game of quidditch is similar to the fictional sport, sans the flying broomsticks. To make up for that, players run with a piece of PVC pipe between their legs, sprinting up and down the field with as many as five balls in play at a time.

There are seven players to a team. Three “chasers” try to score a volleyball through hoops on both sides of the field, each set defended by the opposing team’s “keeper.”

While the chasers focus on scoring, two “beaters” try to stop them by either tackling them or throwing dodgeballs at them. Meanwhile, a seventh player, the “seeker,” goes after the ultimate prize: the snitch. Once a seeker catches the snitch, the match is over.

Matches can be intense. Players run at full-speed without any required protective equipment other than a mouthguard. And because the game is co-ed, players of all gender are tackling each other.

Barker is a beater on the University of Maryland quidditch team. This means she often competes against other beaters to get the dodgeballs, or “bludgers,” that they use to heave at chasers. At 5 feet, 2 inches tall, she’s the shortest person on her team. Male players sometimes tower a foot over her.

“I’ve gotten egregiously tackled many times, where they tackle me too hard for no reason,” she said.

Barker said her second concussion happened when she was tackled by a 200-pound male during tryouts. She got another when a male beater hit her in the head with the bludger, but without letting the ball go, essentially punching her in the head.

On the field, Barker has seen a range of other injuries. During her freshman year, she said the president of her team broke his collarbone twice.

“I’ve seen broken thumbs, broken noses, broken collarbones,” Barker said.

Studying injuries

Amelia Gurley, a former quidditch player, has seen these types of injuries too — particularly as the sport has grown more competitive. A medical student at Brown University, Gurley is now trying to answer a fundamental question: how dangerous is quidditch really? In February, she began work on what she hopes to be the first international quidditch injury survey.

“I worry,” she said. “We’re a new sport. No one’s really even looking into this.”

To date, the most comprehensive data comes from a 2017 study by researchers at the University of Edinburgh who surveyed roughly 50 percent of all quidditch players in the United Kingdom.

The study revealed a mixed picture. While overall injury rates were no higher than in other recreational sports, concussions accounted for more than 20 percent of all injuries. That made concussions the second most common injury overall, according to Ashley Cooper, one of the study’s authors. Sprains were the most common injury, at roughly 26 percent. Lacerations, at about 18 percent, were the third most common injury type.

The authors called the study’s concussion numbers “relatively high when compared to other full contact sports.” For comparison, the study noted that the concussion rate in professional rugby was between 3 percent and 10 percent of all injuries.

Men and women are injured at roughly the same rate, according to the study, but women experienced concussions at nearly double the rate as men.

There are still no studies of injuries in U.S. Quidditch, making it difficult to tell how safety compares in the U.S., where thousands play the game, and the U.K., where the number of players is estimated in the hundreds.

USQ declined to provide specific injury data, but Sarah Woolsey, its executive director, said the league was aware of the concussion risk and noted that medical personnel are required to be present at every official USQ game.

“Every single certified coach in our league is required to complete a concussion training webinar,” Woolsey said. “If any player is suspected of having a concussion … they’re immediately removed from play and cannot return to play unless they are cleared by a medical professional.”

Rethinking the rules

For newcomers to quidditch, the physical nature of the game can be eye-opening.

“I thought it’d be a load of super fans with scars on their heads running around the field,” said Cooper, referring to Harry Potter’s trademark scar.

A quidditch player himself, Cooper said he got “absolutely battered” playing the game. “I thought if it was contact it’d be these asthmatic nerds running around and it wasn’t.”

Now, many players are starting to think more seriously about whether the rules of quidditch need to be reevaluated

One of the biggest debates in the sport is about tackling technique. USQ rules only allow one-armed tackles, but some players have begun to wonder whether two-arms would be safer.

“When you have the broom in one hand and you’re trying to make a tackle, it makes it awkward, you have to twist or fall backwards and throw them over you,” said Mack Morgan, a co-captain of the University of Maryland quidditch team. “With a two hand tackle there’s never really going to be that twisting motion.”

Morgan said that many of the injuries he sees on the field — like torn knee ligaments, broken collarbones and concussions — come from that twisting motion.

Woolsey declined to say whether USQ was considering two-armed tackles, but pointed out that USQ players are required to sign a waiver that states that quidditch is a full contact sport.

Another topic of debate is the co-ed nature of the game and whether it’s safe for differently gendered people to be tackling one another — not only because players don’t wear protective padding, but also because of the size differences between players.

“One of the parts of the rules deals with reckless or excessive force,” Woolsey said. “Our athletes understand it might take a different amount of force to tackle somebody who is smaller versus somebody who is bigger.”

Many players say they’d be reluctant to eliminate co-ed play. Many say they were drawn to the sport because of how inclusive it is for people of all genders, including those who identify as nonbinary.

“It’s nice being able to play sports with people of all genders and all backgrounds,” Gurley said.

Rules are typically updated every year, Woolsey said, based on feedback from players and internal data about injuries gathered at every official USQ game.

She said she thinks quidditch is approaching a point where the rules are more permanent, but will still probably change a bit.

“Even sports that have been around for over a hundred years make changes,” she said.

But as Gurley from Brown University pointed out, there are still many quidditch teams across the country that are not affiliated with USQ. So even if USQ were to make changes, those would not necessarily have any impact for players on non-USQ teams.

Gurley’s former team, the Providence Ashwinders, is not an official USQ team, so it doesn’t need to abide by USQ regulations. Once, she remembers a game that her team played where an EMT was not present until halfway through the tournament.

“Different people in different places are playing quidditch differently, which can be great,” Gurley said. “But it can also be dangerous when it comes to things like safety … We’re not wizards. We can’t fix that kind of stuff with a wave of our wands.”

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