Sure, Tiger worked his glutes off -- but will it show at Masters?
AUGUSTA, Ga. – Tiger Woods will have us believe his game is ready to win his 15th major and fifth green jacket at the Masters. That was the message he delivered to a full house at his Tuesday afternoon pre-tournament press conference.
“I feel like my game is finally ready to compete at this level, the highest level,” Woods said.
The fact remains that he has played only 47 holes this year on the PGA Tour – most very badly – and none since walking off the course because his glutes weren’t activating during the first round of the Farmers Insurance Open in February. So why is Woods so confident that his game will be up to par after a nine-week layoff?
“I worked my ass off,” he said, suggesting at the very least that the glutes are activating again. “That’s the easiest way to kind of describe it. I worked hard. People would never understand how much work I put into it to come back and do this again. But it was sun-up to sundown, and whenever I had free time; if the kids were asleep, I’d still be doing it, and then when they were in school, I’d still be doing it.”
Woods reiterated yet again that he was stuck between the changes to his release patterns. He knew the swing changes being made under the watchful eye of swing consultant Chris Como wouldn’t be an easy fix, which is one of the reasons he stepped away from competition to re-tool his game. Woods said he made incremental progress, but nothing came quickly enough to put his game on display at the Arnold Palmer Invitational three weeks ago. Yet, Woods said he never lost hope that he would regain his form even as frustration set in. Clubs were thrown, or as Woods put it, slipped out of his hands.
“Traveled some pretty good distances, too,” he said. “I would get in these modes where it would come for 10 minutes and I would just have it, just dialed in; and then I’d lose it for an hour; and then I’d get it back. And next thing you know, I’d flip to having it for an hour to 10 minutes of losing it, and then it got to a point where it was just there.”
If Johnson Wagner can go from shooting 87 in San Antonio one week to a sudden-death playoff the next in Houston, why can’t Woods make an equally stunning recovery in form?
“This is a difficult first place to start,” ESPN analyst Paul Azinger said.
For starters, there are the chipping woes that have plagued Woods since the Hero World Challenge in December. Nobody could get himself out of a corner with a wedge like Woods. It made him an unstoppable force. Some, including his former coach, Hank Haney, call what he has now a case of the yips, one of golf’s worst four-letter words. The yips is a malady that tends to fester, and it isn’t covered under Obamacare. But would Woods really show up this week if he hadn’t solved the chunks, skulls and flubs? Count Azinger among those who think it’s possible Woods could be his old self around the greens.
“He was leaned forward a little bit and getting the shaft ahead,” Azinger said. “It shouldn’t be difficult for Tiger to fix that. I don’t think he had the yips. I think he just was in a terrible setup position to deliver the club.”
But Golf Channel analyst Brandel Chamblee says it doesn’t matter what you call Woods’ chipping woes, “it’s catastrophically bad, what we saw. So to get past that on the most difficult place in the world to hit 100-yard pitch shots, to hit 40-yard, 30-yard.
“Any pitch shots, imagine the pin left on 3 and he’s off the back and he’s trying to cut it into that slope or run it up that slope, it’s the most difficult place in the world to hit pitch shots.”
Woods hasn’t won a green jacket since 2005. There was a time when it seemed the four-time Masters champion was destined to fulfill Jack Nicklaus’ prediction that he would win 10 coats (as many as Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer combined). Now, many wonder whether Woods can simply make the cut. Not Woods. He talked only about winning. To his way of thinking, all that has changed since his last victory here is the competition is younger and the course has been stretched longer to accommodate modern equipment.
“The only difference is that, yeah, I won the Masters when Jordan (Spieth) was still in diapers,” Woods said. “That’s the difference is that guys are now younger, a whole other generation of kids are coming out.”
Too much of late we’ve seen Woods exude such optimism in his game only to fall flat on his face. Ahead of his season debut at the Waste Management Phoenix Open, Woods declared he was “ahead of schedule on each stage of the game plan,” and had “hit thousands upon thousands upon thousands of chips” to remedy the chipping woes that plagued his game at the Hero World Challenge in December. It took one hole to confirm that was far from true.
While Woods obsesses over his patterns and his explosiveness with Como, golf is still a game not of how but how many.
“Sadly, for whatever reason, Tiger sacrificed a winning swing at the altar of a perfect swing and he may have sacrificed a winning body at the altar of a perfect body, and it’s been hard to watch the undoing,” Azinger said.
It will be fascinating to see how Woods plays in his latest return. His greatest motivation, he said, remains unchanged.
“Winning,” he said. “I like it.”
Grown-up Jason Day merges all the pieces on road to Augusta
Rory McIlroy remains odds-on favorite to win Masters, Spieth's odds worsen
