Life ends at 40 for most of the great ones in sports.

Golf is different.

You can be old and win.

You can be 50 and win a major, like Phil Mickelson was when he captured the PGA Championship in 2021.

Jack Nicklaus was 46 when he won the Masters in 1986.

That’s the same age Tom Brady is now, 46. Some people think he can come back from his 2023 retirement and win an eighth Super Bowl. But most agree that the seventh one in 2021 with Tampa Bay when he was 43 will be his last.

LeBron James turns 40 in December. He averaged 25.7 points and 35.3 minutes in 71 games this season. He still plays at an elite level but hasn’t won an NBA championship since 2020.

And this is why golf is different. It’s not a team sport.

Many, if not most star pro athletes in team sports could have stuck around longer than they did and contributed as backups. But could they handle such a shift psychologically? And how long physically?

At some point, anyone who stays too long becomes a liability and might lose the privilege to decide when it’s over. The place on the roster is needed.

But golf is different. Tiger Woods was 43 when he won his last major. Five years later, against all kinds of odds, he still tees it up at events of his choosing.

He can do this because golf is an individual sport. He can keep doing it, regardless of results, because he is Tiger Woods.

So, when Woods misses the cut by eight strokes like he did at the PGA Championship this week it doesn’t hurt anyone else. Although he’s unlikely to say it, Adam Scott might disagree; he was one of Woods’ playing partners and missed the cut too. (The third player in their group, Keegan Bradley, did fine, shooting 6 under in the first two rounds.)

Woods, 48, plays in tournaments just once a month now. He constantly battles a litany of medical issues, especially back, knee and ankle injuries. This goes back to even before his Feb. 23, 2021, car accident, when the injuries to his right leg and right ankle threatened the likelihood of him ever walking again.

But Woods fought his way back onto the course. The 2022 Masters — where he finished 47th — marked the peak of his comeback after the car crash. Some might still add “so far” to that sentence. But not many.

No one talks about him catching Nicklaus for the most majors won anymore; Nicklaus has 18 to 15 for Woods. Woods’ last major win came at the 2019 Masters. He won again later in the calendar year at the Zozo Championship, putting him in a tie with Sam Snead for most PGA Tour career victories (82). Woods’ best result anywhere since then was at the 2023 Genesis Invitational, where he tied for 45th.

He finished his 6-over 77 on Friday with a birdie. But the round started with two triple bogeys on the first four holes.

Woods has an unsolvable dilemma. He said that to get better results, he needs to play more in preparation for his once-a-month tournament. But the reason he’s competing just once a month is that his beat-up body won’t let him play more.

He was asked what his strategy was Friday after the two triples made surviving the cut an unrealistic goal.

“Keep the pedal down, keep fighting, keep grinding, keep working hard at posting the best score that I can possibly post today,” Woods said. “That’s all I can do. It’s going to be a lot, but I’m going to fight until the end.”

The end for Tiger Woods is whenever he chooses.

Golf is different.