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It doesn’t seem that long ago that we wondered what Tiger Woods would do when his playing career began to dim.

No golf star has ever burned brighter than Woods and it was difficult to imagine what the next chapter of his life and career might look like.

And here we are.

Woods is expected to be front and center Tuesday night when his Jupiter Links Golf Club team debuts in the TGL against the Los Angeles Golf Club, the second match in the splashy new indoor league’s introductory season. More than 900,000 viewers tuned in last week to see what the TGL is all about and it’s a fair guess that even more will watch Tuesday night when Mr. Sun Day Red has a driver in his hands.

If anyone tells you they saw Woods, when he was winning majors the way Scottie Scheffler wins tournaments these days, being the front man for a made-for-television simulator golf competition on winter nights, don’t trust their handicap.

There was a thought, before the back surgeries and the auto accident, that Woods might ghost the game. He would play majors as long as he felt competitive but, given how aggressively Woods has protected his privacy through the years, he might retreat into his own world and stay there.

Instead, Woods seems to have landed comfortably in his middle age and that feels like a win for everyone.

“The fire still burns to compete,” Woods said in December at the Hero World Challenge, where he played the role of tournament host only while continuing rehab after his most recent back procedure.

Woods talks like a man who is making peace with his new reality without surrendering the fight against the dying light. He has always loved the chase, reveling in the work to the point of subtly boasting about what he did before his workouts were irrevocably altered by what’s happened to his body.

Now, some of the physical work is necessitated for his own quality of life but Woods defiantly contends that he can still dig out the magic that had us spellbound for years. He probably can and he probably will for a day here and a day there but the idea of him carrying it through four tournament days again is unrealistic.

The morning after the first TGL match, a colleague mentioned that his 11-year-old pushed back against going to bed, wanting to stay up to continue watching golf in its new form. That same morning, two friends crossed paths in a coffee shop and, after saying hello, one told the other that they needed to get to work immediately finding tickets to see a TGL match in person.

He did it in the 2019 Masters but that was almost six years and a life-threatening accident ago. It’s only because he defied golf’s gravity all those years that the thought of him doing it one more time even crosses our minds.

That’s been Woods’ special gift, daring us to imagine what he might do.

Woods was at the SoFi Center last week when TGL debuted, sitting alongside fellow creators Mike McCarley and Rory McIlroy, watching their vision and their investment come to life with 1,500 people inside the arena.

It was McCarley who came up with the original idea and he took it to Woods, understanding that getting his buy-in would open every door. Woods then convinced McIlroy that TGL – with its massive simulator screen, its adjustable putting surface and its frontier-pushing concept – was worth both the time and the money.

They appear to be on to something.

The morning after the first TGL match, a colleague mentioned that his 11-year-old pushed back against going to bed, wanting to stay up to continue watching golf in its new form. That same morning, two friends crossed paths in a coffee shop and, after saying hello, one told the other that they needed to get to work immediately finding tickets to see a TGL match in person.

Similar to what Nicklaus and Palmer have done before him, Woods is creating an empire beyond his playing career. His golf course design business is thriving, he’s a proud father and he does just enough advertising work to be effective without being omnipresent like the Kelces and Snoop Dogg.

Woods is playing TGL not just because of his role in its creation and apparent success but because it keeps him in the game. Woods has let his guard down to a degree and, after decades of beating the spirit out of the guys around him, now he loves being one of the guys.

At the SoFi Center, there are no hills to climb, no cold to deal with, no weight of history on Woods’ shoulders.

It’s conceivable that one year from now, Woods will be in Hawaii playing his first PGA Tour Champions event. That once seemed so far away, both because Woods changed the world at such a young age and probably couldn’t imagine the potential fulfillment it might bring.

Now, he talks about playing with guys he grew up with, playing three days rather than four and using a cart to take the strain off his legs and back.

This is the fun part.

Something, it seems, Woods has grown comfortably into.

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