A stroll for the ages

 This felt like a benediction, this walk up 18 under the lowering Scottish clouds. The  tribute rose around him, cheers and shouts and hands banging together. He raised his cap as it went on and on. Waved. Waved some more.

Not much was happening here. Just an entire era of golf taking one last stroll on the Old Course at St. Andrews, fighting hard to keep his old stoic's mask intact.

In the end, Tiger Woods failed, of course. He was only mortal after all.

Past 45 now, stumping along on a ruined leg, he proved his mortality with two days of weekend warrior golf, piling a 75 atop a 78 to miss The Open cut by roughly a bazillion strokes. And so this walk up 18 indeed felt like a benediction, or at least an acknowledgment that we were never going to see Tiger Woods again, at least the way we remember him.

He's old Arnie now, old Jack, taking his bows. The future of the game he took into the stratosphere -- the game he made appointment viewing in a way no but Arnie or Jack ever had -- belongs to someone else. All those people shouting and applauding and all but roaring knew that, and Tiger knows it, too.

It's why the stoic's mask cracked and his features quivered and the tears came, as he walked up toward the green. It's why a walk up 18 by a guy who'd missed the cut will be the signature moment of this Open, no matter who hoists the claret jug tomorrow afternoon.

It's why Tiger mused that this really might have been the last time he'd play The Open at St. Andrews, because it doesn't return here until 2027 and by then he'll be 51. It's why he reminisced about Arnie hitting his first tee shot in the second round of his last Open in 1995, and Jack playing his last Open in '05.

"Just to hear the ovations getting louder and louder and louder, I felt that as I was coming in (this year)," he said.

He says he's not retiring. He says he plans on playing more Opens. But he also says this is it for him this year, that just playing the events he played required an enormous amount of effort.

"It's hard just to walk and play 18 holes," he said.

Mortality talking again.