Terrible Tiger’s nightmare comeback
AS COMEBACKS go, this was roughly comparable to watching your favourite singer return to the stage in the twilight of his career — and finding he can barely hold a note.
The best thing about Tiger Woods’ eagerly awaited return yesterday was that he got to the 18th green and was neither limping nor clutching his back. His golf? Oh dear.
An opening tee shot that sailed out of bounds was shocking enough but to see the man who has played more great chip shots than anyone in history cold-duff no fewer than four during his 18 holes was positively toe-curling.
in an 18-man field at the Hero World Challenge, Woods finished 18th after a decidedly unheroic opening round of 77 it left him a mile behind Jordan Spieth as the remarkable 21-year- old American continued from where he left off on Sunday, when he won the Australian Open with a brilliant final round of 63. He holed a gutsy 10-footer on the last to card a six-under 66, while Graeme McDowell, twice a winner of this event, shot a fine 68.
Woods said: ‘it was just one of those days where nothing goes your way. i feel like i didn’t hit it that poorly. i have zero pain. Haven’t said that in a long time. it’s nice to be able to launch it again.’ To be fair, it is four months since Woods last played but it’s at least twice as long as that in reality, given there were plenty of issues with his back long before he finally gave in to reason last August. Yet in the build-up there were plenty of pundits who expected him to turn in a good first round. He played in the pro-am on Wednesday and shot two under par, with the fluid, remodelled swing under new coach Chris Como drawing rave reviews.
So to his opening blow. Over the years we’ve seen some amazingly bad first tee shots from someone so good. At the Open n in 2003 he lost a ball, which took ook some doing on a hole lined ned by 10,000 people. At the Masters he oncence missed not only the he first fairway but thee adjacent ninth as s well. At the 2006 ryder Cup he finished in a lake that wasn’t on the map.
Here was another spec- tacular contribu- tion. On an easysy par four with ha a 40-yard wide fairway, Woods hooked it so badly it sailed iled out of bounds, finishing ing in someone’s swimming pool.
Woods did make a birdie with his provisional ball to limit the damage to a single dropped shot but another miss to the left on the difficult par-three second meant a bogey-bogey start. Then it got worse. At the seventh he failed to get out of a greenside bunker. At the eighth, after almost finding another backyard with another errant approach, he stubbed a chip that barely travelled a foot.
The resultant double bo bogey, follow lowed by a rare par at the ninth ninth, meant a front n nine played in 41 sho shots. On a course where h he once shot 59 for 18 holes.
Over the back nine there were some encouraging signs. The swing certainly looks far more natural and, after hitting just one fairway on the front nine, he started locating some on the inward half. At the 12th, his approach almost finished in the hole for a tap-in birdie.
Another looked likely at the par-five 13th, when his second shot landed just 10 feet from the hole. But, as all isleworth members know, there’s a slope here that throws the ball off the green to the right if you’re too aggressive, and that’s what happened. From there, Woods clunked not one chip shot but two, and walked off with a shattering bogey six. When he did it again at the 16th, he looked ready to explode.
it’s going to take some time, isn’t it?
Meanwhile, 47-year- old Steve Stricker was also playing his first round since the US PGA Championship in August. He breezed round in 67. ROSS FISHER shot a six-under 66 to be two shots clear after an impressive first day of the nedbank Golf Challenge at the Gary Player Country Club in Sun City, South Africa.