This Tiger comeback might have actual staying power
WOODS SAYS HE IS FINALLY FREE OF PAIN AS HE PREPARES FOR HIS FIRST PGA TOUR EVENT IN A YEAR
The next stop in the Tiger Woods comeback starts Thursday. Woods will play twice in California over the next little while as he begins another comeback on the PGA Tour from back surgery.
He is scheduled to play this week in the Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines, the San Diego course where he has won eight times. That includes the 2008 U. S. Open, his 14th and most recent major.
Then it’s off to the Genesis Open at Riviera in Los Angeles that starts Feb. 15. Riviera is where Woods played his first PGA Tour event as a 16-year-old amateur.
The latest stop on the comeback came in December in the Bahamas where he played against an 18-man field with no cut and said he was feeling good about his health and his game.
As you may recall, Woods had fusion surgery on his lower back — his fourth back surgery in three years — and missed most of 2017 until he returned at the Hero World Challenge in the Bahamas and tied for ninth, 10 shots out of the lead.
Different about this return was that Woods was hitting with power, at times hitting it past Justin Thomas and Henrik Stenson, and he played several practice rounds with Thomas, Rickie Fowler, Daniel Berger, and Dustin Johnson. All of them remarked that he looked much fitter, healthier, and happier.
The PGA Tour figures to get an even bigger boost.
‘‘I think Tiger’s return and the excitement based on how he looked ... based on what it does for ratings, what it does for a non-golfer’s interest in golf, it’s got to be at the forefront of the excitement,’’ Jordan Spieth said.
‘‘ With Tiger, we just don’t exactly know what it’s going to bring. But I think because of the way that the Hero went and the confidence that he’s talking with, the place that he’s at in life right now, I think he’s in the best pos- ition he’s been in a few years to come back and be a regular out here competing.’’
He is No. 647 in the world ranking and not eligible for the two World Golf Championships in March, key tournaments leading into the Masters.
He has not played all four majors since 2015 — he missed the cut in three of them — because of his back injuries. He has not made the cut in all four majors since 2013.
Woods has 79 career victories on the PGA Tour, the most recent at the Bridgestone Invitational in 2013. He needs four more to break the record held by Sam Snead.
Then there’s the reality of what may be in store for all those who think another big win will come one day. Who wants to raise hopes only to see another back surgery and yet another long, hobbling hiatus from the sport?
This seems different. semi-sort-of promise.
What Woods did in the Bahamas playing in his own 18- star Hero World Challenge invitational for four days that weekend was remarkable. He wasn’t in any pain. He played all four days and finished strongly. He showed a somewhat- new swing with no “reverse C” at all, which should take pressure off his lower back on which he’s had four surgeries. He also appears to have tweaked his stance to take strain off his much-troubled left knee.
Many in golf would have settled for a Tiger Woods who did not walk, bend and wince like a 90- year- old. Great, at 41, he may have found a swing that won’t put him back in the hospital. Bravo, Tiger may not need a walker just to get around the course with his kids!
But that was just the start. In that Bahamas field with Rickie Fowler, Jordan Spieth, Justin Thomas, Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka, Hideki
IMatsuyama, Henrik Stenson and Justin Rose, Woods shot 69- 68-75- 68 for an 8- underpar 280 for a tie for ninth place. Woods was tied with Matt Kuchar, ahead of hotshot Thomas and eight, nine and 11 shots ahead of Johnson, Stenson and Koepka, the current U.S. Open champion.
Most meaningful in December for any long- term optimism was that Woods ripped 335- yard drives that finished alongside most of the best of the current golf crop. Woods’s ball speed topped 180 m.p.h. off the tee, which would have ranked him in the top 25 last year.
Woods reached par 5s with long irons. He didn’t yip any putts. He did chunk a chip shot, so his scary case of nerves around and on the greens in recent years may not be fixed. He showed no pain or limp. He looked a lot like Tiger Woods, though when he took his hat off on the 18th green, there wasn’t a lot of hair.
Woods has misdiagnosed his health, and his golf future, so atrociously for almost a decade that there’s no reason to take any self-evaluation at face value.
But, this time, the eye test and the scoreboard backed him up.
All this, of course, proves nothing. But it certainly whispers some promises.
When planning his schedule, now focused on major championships and little else, Woods said, in a post-round TV interview, “Play enough, but don’t play too much.” Figuring out that balance, after taking more than 10 months away from the game after his back-fusion surgery, is critical. Few think he’d have any chance at a meaningful comeback — ever — if he needed yet another back surgery.
But, until his showing in the Bahamas, I thought his career as even a top- 50 player was done. After all his physical miseries over the past dozen years, I doubted that I’d ever see him go after a drive as hard, or compete against current stars as credibly, or come up with a swing that is so “safety-first,” as he displayed in the Bahamas.
The only player who has ever come back from worse injuries than Woods is probably Ben Hogan. And Hogan got hit by a Greyhound bus and almost died.
What can derail Tiger? Are you kidding? Anything. Everything. Just trying to play enough golf, and hit enough balls, spend enough time standing on a putting green, may be enough to make his back scream at him again. But Woods doesn’t think so.
Woods said in the Bahamas: “I knew I could play four days ... I was a little nervous. I’ve had some tough times over the years with my back ... then finally come out on the good side.
“There were times the world seemed very small. Day-to-day stuff was very difficult for me to do ... Now I’m able to sit back and enjoy it more, talk to more people. It’s been really nice.”
Any pain at all?
“No,” he said, adding, “just pain in my head,” referring to his bad shots.
For several years, selfdeprecation has become a new verbal utility club for Woods. All the greats, including Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus, eventually learned to alter their tone when discussing themselves to accommodate reality. Tiger may have taken the longest, but he’s gotten there. He wears his pain-weary modesty quite well. He doesn’t bite on silly questions about how many more majors he wants to win. He’s been too close to Never Play Again for that.
Everyone knows what he wants. Tiger just wants his beloved golf game back — not 100 per cent of it, because that’s obviously gone, but a credible competitive game that he can take out to big events and be a viable part of the sport again. Like most fans, he wants to know what he could craft, invent and improvise with all his knowledge and imagination, if he had no pain. Whatever that is, he’ll take it.
Is Tiger ever going to win another major? It’s been so long since he was under that kind of pressure, and so many parts of his game and body have deteriorated since then, that it’s very doubtful. But last month, it seemed cruelly fanciful.
Will he ever win another Tour event? The smart money might say, “No.” But as long as he shows progress, as long as he frees up his mind and plays the game, rather than constantly over- analyzing every swing, it’s imaginable again.
The huge question, bigger than beating the yips or facing the pressure of being somewhere in contention on a future Sunday, is whether he can stay healthy. At all.
Woods has psychological scars from his image- crushing sex addiction years ago. But his surgical scars are unprecedented: No golfer has ever pushed his body beyond its limits as often, or in as many places, as Woods. Or failed to give himself enough time to heal when he returned. Bad judgment? Hubris? Penance?
Shooting 8 under par with booming drives on a balmy island resort course in winter may not seem like much, until you remember Woods’s list of documented injuries. His lower back had surgery for a pinched nerve ( 2014), two followup procedures on the same spot and anterior lumbar interbody fusion surgery (2017).
His left knee had a cyst removed and fluid drained (’ 02), a ruptured anterior cruciate ligament (’07), arthroscopic surgery and ACL repair (’08) and an MCL sprain (’ 11) plus a double stress fracture of the left tibia he endured to win the 2008 U.S. Open.
He’s also been sidelined by an inflamed facet joint in his neck (’ 10), a muscle injury in his shoulder blade (’ 06), an elbow strain (’ 13), a strained left Achilles’ (’ 11) and a reinjured Achilles’ (’12).
Six months ago, after a DUI arrest, later reduced to a guilty plea for reckless driving, he blew 0.00 for alcohol but received “professional help” to manage medication for back pain and a sleep disorder. Later, he announced he completed a “private intensive program.” Gee, after a decade of surgeries, and winning a 91- hole U. S. Open on a broken leg, how could potentially addictive pain meds have snuck up on him?
The way to wager is that some part of Woods breaks again, that he has to withdraw because he can’t walk or swing. Or his caddy, once again, has to pick the ball up out of the hole for him. By now, his first name could be Job, not Eldrick.
But the way to hope, at least for me, is that sometime next year his name shows up, even if briefly, on a leaderboard somewhere.
Tiger Woods was born to play golf — both to get and give joy. Let him finish it upright and walking straight.
I THINK HE’S IN THE BEST POSITION HE’S BEEN IN A FEW YEARS TO COME BACK AND BE A REGULAR OUT HERE COMPETING.