Back at the Honda, Tiger’s expectations differ somewhat
PALM BEACH GARDENS — Tiger Woods is back at the Honda Classic, and to a lot of people the rest is just details.
Justin Thomas, the 2017 PGA Tour Player of the Year, admits to being a little starstruck, even now that he considers Tiger a friend.
“You know, I wore black pants and a red shirt every tournament I played when I was a junior because of him,” said Thomas, who has won seven times on tour since Tiger last got a title at the 2013 Bridgestone Invitational. “I use an interlocking grip because I saw a picture of him following through when I was a kid and he had an interlocking grip and that was the day I started using it.”
Tiger started a lot of little brush fires like that around the world when he was annihi-
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lating the competition in the early 2000s. Some of those young fans grew up to become PGA Tour stars. Most of the rest just grew up loving golf because it suddenly sizzled like basketball when Tiger was slam-dunking the competition and roared like football when Tiger was delivering the hits.
So that’s what will be filling up the spectator buses for what could be the largest and hungriest Thursday crowd since Tiger’s last Honda appearance in 2014. Whether it winds up being the most satisfied will depend on whether the 14-time major champion makes the Honda cut and pushes this party into the weekend.
Nobody wants to hear this, but that is hardly guaranteed. Tiger has only broken par twice in six rounds on tour this season and he missed the cut at last week’s Genesis Open in Los Angeles by a country club mile, which is to say four strokes.
In a continuing comeback from spinal fusion surgery just 10 months ago, he is concentrating on the benefits of “tournament reps,” as he calls them, retraining himself in the basic physical and mental exercises that give a player a chance out here.
Most of the questions during Wednesday’s interview session, therefore, were about the Masters in April. Tiger, 42, will try to stay afloat until then, riding the river of competition until it leads him back to the safe port of Augusta National, where muscle memory and familiarity with the course will always make him a threat to do something amazing.
“I just miss the rush of competing for a green jacket,” Tiger said Wednesday after finishing his Honda pro-am round. “I’ve been doing it since I was 19 years old and I’ve enjoyed every single challenge. Having to sit on the sidelines is not fun. It really isn’t, especially since I know how to play the golf course and I wished I could play but I was unfortunately physically debilitated. I could not compete.
“This year, it’s different. Looking forward to it.”
Fighting words? Well, maybe, but Tiger won’t be throwing haymakers at PGA National’s Champion course, where his last visit ended with back spasms and a withdrawal in the midst of the final round.
With the wind up and the greens getting harder to hold, the premium this week will be on conservative and reliable tee shots. As defending Honda champion Rickie Fowler puts it, “You need to be playing out of the fairway to at least give yourself a chance at making some stress-free pars and maybe throwing some birdies in there.”
That doesn’t sound like Tiger, at least not lately.
While finishing 23rd at Torrey Pines and missing the cut at Los Angeles, he hit barely a third of the fairways and slightly more than half of the greens in regulation. During Wednesday’s pro-am, a five-hour slog followed outside the ropes by a few hundred fans, Tiger chose irons on some par-4 tees and later predicted hitting driver just four or five times a round during the tournament itself.
Great approach shots and even greater putting could get him into contention like that, but more likely it will be a challenge to maintain a score around par 70, which closely approximates Tiger’s average score of 69.92 in three previous appearances at PGA National. Could something like that be enough to keep him smiling, genuinely pleased simply to be back on tour?
“Well, I’m not in pain,” he said. “Yeah, I am a lot happier. I’ve been struggling for quite some time, probably near five years now, so it was a long period of time where I was really struggling.
“I’m still learning that I’m stiffer than I used to be. I can’t create the same angles that I used to create naturally. Obviously, I’m fused, so it’s a little bit different, and I’m still learning what that feels like under the gun ... It’s not something that I’m used to because I’ve never felt like this before, but this is the new norm.”
The old norm? Missed cuts weren’t even a part of that conversation. Neither were missed putts within 4 feet. The guy was locked in, the favorite to win every tournament he entered and a surprise when he didn’t. We could tell you how differently the oddsmakers see him now, that the Westgate Las Vegas Superbook lists Tiger at 60-1 to win the Honda this week, but again, that’s just details.
“It might not be the game that he had back in the day,” said 2015 Honda champion Padraig Harrington, “but it’s certainly good enough. There’s many of us who would love to be in Tiger’s shoes in any given week and have his ability and we would feel good about it.”
There’s magnetism aplenty to keep moving that needle. There’s Tiger, back on the Honda Classic commute from his Jupiter Island home and feeling, finally, that it may soon be his time again.