Tiger Finishes His First Start Back With A Tough 76 But Doesn't Die
We made it. Tiger Woods finally returned to golf and finally played a full 72 holes. No injuries. No tweaks. No grimaces. No reaching for his back. No withdrawing. Not even any discomfort. I said it in my last blog but all anyone was hoping for this week was for Tiger to make it through 72 holes injury-free. Well he did that and then some. It wasn’t just that he made it through the week healthy. It’s that I can’t tell you the last time I’ve seen Tiger swing as freely as he did during the Hero World Challenge. Maybe 2013? It’s significant because every other comeback Tiger has tried to make usually ended in him grimacing, reaching for his back and pulling out of the tournament. Think of it this way. We’ve all had a player on our favorite team go down with a horrific knee injury. That player then goes through extensive surgery and rehab and eventually starts playing again. Those first few plays (or even games or seasons) back you hold your breath every time the player runs or jumps or makes a cut. That’s how it feels watching Tiger swing. Every time he takes a rip I hold my breath and hope to the lord above that he doesn’t reach for his back in pain. He didn’t at all this week and that’s awesome.
Just look at this swing. He was hitting his driver all week like this (sometimes not the most accurate drives but you can’t win them all)
But not only did he get through the week healthy, he put up some super solid numbers. Including a jaw-dropping 65 on Friday that gave me a boner the International Space Station could see. The biggest thing everybody wondered about coming into this weeks in terms of his game was his chipping.
Then he did this
and this
and this
but also this
On the whole though, LOTS AND LOTS of good chips. Way more good than bad. He only chunked a few and they weren’t the type of chunks that are the product of yips. Just chunks that are a product of rust from 466 days away from playing professional golf. The biggest issue Tiger had all week was with his driver and it meant near death on a lot of holes. For every good drive he hit, he’d hit another one way left or way right. Every other part of his game looked solid from fairway woods to irons to putting. That last one maybe being the most important. Having his trusty Scotty Cameron back in the bag is a godsend. So much so that he said the first thing he did when he found out Nike was getting out of golf equipment was to throw Scotty back in the bag. All of the putter technology in the world can’t make up for simply being comfortable with a putter. And seeing that Tiger has won 13 of his 14 majors (so far) with his Scotty, I’d say that’s a good one to go with.
How good was this week for Tiger? Check out this stat
That’s pretty wild all things considered. You can take that set a couple of ways. One, the guy can still pile up a ton of birdies and eagles and put himself in contention. And two, he made a bunch of mistakes this weekend and that’s what held him back from being in contention on Sunday. The good thing is that the mistakes are fixable. It’d be a much worse situation if the old guy couldn’t make birdies anymore. That clearly isn’t the problem. If he can chill out with the driver from time to time and keep sinking putts, there are more than a few victories in the future for the soon-to-be 41-year-old.
The next big question is how often is Tiger gonna play. I think he needs to play as much as he can. Keep building that confidence. It’s gonna be a real bummer if he takes a couple months off after what we just saw in the Bahamas. I had so much fun watching golf and tweeting about golf and talking about golf this weekend that I hope he plays every damn week. The game of golf is simply better when Tiger’s around. More people watch. More people get excited. It’s all positives. It’s also nearly impossible for him to carry the momentum from this week if he opts for a long lay off. Long story short, I hope he plays more tournaments but on the flip side I wanna make sure he stays healthy for tournaments that actually matter. We’ll see what he decides to do.
All in all, a super successful week for Eldrick. It was honestly just good to see The Man The Myth The legend back in his Sunday red. If that doesn’t get your blood pumping then you’re a corpse.
Oh and congratulations to Hideki Matsuyama on the win blah blah blah
Bonus: It took 71 holes but we finally got swearing Tiger again. He’s back.
