Tiger Woods acts like time is on his side.
“I’ve gone through phases like this, rounds like this, before in the past,” Woods said Thursday after a roller-coaster, 1-over-par 73 to open the Memorial, a tournament he’s won five times. “Sometimes it’s taken me about a year and then it kicked in and I did pretty good after that.”
News flash, Tiger: It’s not 1998, and you’re not 22 years old. Woods is going to be 40 this year. His best years are well and truly behind him.
He needs to find a way to be competitive and do it fast. Right now, finishing just his 11th round of the year, he’s as lost as he’s ever been. Except he’d never admit it — at least publicly — preferring to hide behind the tried and trusted “working on my swing.”
It’s only marginally better than hearing him speak of his glutes failing to activate.
As Steve Williams, his estranged caddie, said in a recent interview, Woods always wanted to own his swing but all he’s ended up doing with his incessant tinkering is renting a lot of different ones.
I’m not even sure what swing he’s working on now.
It’s certainly not the one he unveiled at the Hero World Challenge in December. Back then, Woods talked of rediscovering the movement of his youth — a much freer, looser swing than the robotic, muscular one he used during his years with Sean Foley.
But that swing didn’t last long, it seems.
Chris Como, his “swing consultant,” is a lot more like Foley — more bio-mechanist than artist — and elements of a more centered swing have been obvious with Woods since the Masters. But just what he’s doing no one knows for sure because, as always, he guards such information as if it’s a matter of national security.
“It’s just different,” Woods responded when I asked about the latest evolution.
In what way, I asked?
“I’m moving off it, yes, but it’s just . . . differently.”
Well, OK.
Whatever he and Como are working on, perhaps they might want to rethink it if it includes both low snap hooks and 80-yard blocks like the drive Woods hit on the 18th tee Thursday.
Jason Day, his playing partner, gasped when Woods’ drive started sailing into territory that is uncharted, even for seasoned pros.
“Where’s OB on 18?” Steve Elkington tweeted.
On the previous hole, Woods blocked a 3-wood at least 60 yards, leading to an inevitable bogey.
And that’s the real problem with these big misses: They are leaving him in places where only bogeys — or worse — are born. He’s just not good enough with the short game these days to salvage par the way he once did.
What has to be maddening for Woods, though, is that when he’s good, he’s very good. He hit only four fairways — one of them with a 4-iron — but made five birdies in his round. Consider that Jordan Spieth also had five birdies, but he had just one bogey and sits perched right behind the leaders.
Woods used to turn 72s into 68s, but these days he’s turning 77 into 73. Is that what it’s come to, the great Tiger Woods battling to make cuts?
Certainly there’s no chance he can compete like this against the game’s best players.
Even he knows that.
“I didn’t play very good today at all,” he said. “I didn’t have much with my game. I need to work on it here a little bit.”
While it’s admirable that he spent long hours in the sun Thursday afternoon, the question has to be asked: Why wait till the damage is done? What has he been doing for the past four weeks?
All we know is he was being a soccer dad to his two kids, and though that’s great, perhaps someone should remind him that a lot of fathers manage to coach the kids and go to work.
Woods is always elusive when it comes to hard answers about where he’s going with his game. What he likes to feed is jargon. Motor patterns is one of his favorite phrases that is, essentially, meaningless.
“It’s the pattern we work on,” he said of his two-way misses. “It’s kind of what you have to go through, and, unfortunately, I can hit it either way because of this move we’re working on.
“But it’s so much more flush, and so much more solid and a lot easier on my body when I do it right.”
When he does it right . . .
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