“I'm starting to put the pieces together of late, and I'm very excited about that.”
Tiger Woods uttered those words at Firestone Country Club, scene of his return from a three-month layoff, but not at his by-the-numbers Tuesday news conference.
He said them during a pre-tournament interview for last year’s Bridgestone Invitational.
Maybe he even believed them. But it turned out then that all the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t have put the pieces of a disintegrating golf game together again.
On a course he’d won on seven times before, Woods gave the worst performance of his professional career, shooting 18 over par to lose by 30 shots to the winner, Hunter Mahan, and finish ahead of only Henrik Stenson, who fell out of his sick bed to play.
So, as golf swing gurus like to say, what you feel is not always real.
What, then, are we to expect a year later from a player who’s completed just nine competitive holes since April?
I seriously doubt even he knows.
Of course Woods sounded robust and confident and raring to go on Tuesday, but that’s his style: This is a 35-year-old man who’s been playing the same role — and sticking to the same script — for a very long time.
At Torrey Pines in January I walked with him during his Wednesday afternoon pro-am round. He shot an effortless 67 on the beefy South Course and I was sold on the fact that he was ready to bury the ghosts of 2010.
The Tiger of old would be back, I reasoned, because he’d had seven weeks off, had time to internalize the machinations of Sean Foley’s swing, time to grow accustomed to the realities of divorce and shared parenthood and, more importantly, seemed once more interested — if not totally in love again — with golf.
“I feel great. It's great to be back. I do feel more fresh, because I've had an offseason,” he said in San Diego.
“I had a chance to train and get ready and practice and prepare, so I'm looking forward to the season.”
His words might have convinced many, but he couldn’t talk his game into believing him.
Woods slumped to finish in a tie for 44th, his worst-ever showing on a course on which he’d won his previous five starts.
After that disappointment, there were flashes of promise in the lead-up to the Masters, then that scintillating front nine on Sunday at Augusta.
But instead of closing — and that’s what the Tiger of old did better than anyone who’s ever lived — he let a 15th major championship slip away, missing short putts down the stretch.
Soon after we were told of mysterious “minor” injuries to his left knee — the one that’s given him trouble since his teenage years — and left Achilles suffered at the Masters.
Woods skipped Quail Hollow — another of his favorite courses — but showed up at The Players (one of his least favorite courses) and after proclaiming how great he felt in his practice rounds, limped off TPC Sawgrass after nine holes, six over par, his ego as wounded as his leg.
Since then he’s fired his longtime caddie, Steve Williams, and in the short-term will have on his bag childhood friend, Bryon Bell, who allegedly organized the travel plans of at least two of Woods' paramours.
If Woods wanted to bury the past, it’d probably be a good idea not to give Gloria Allred a reason to schedule news conferences.
Woods also revealed on Tuesday that he was close to coming back to play last week at the Greenbrier Classic in West Virginia and had been practicing for three weeks.
Yet he only teamed back up with Foley last Friday?
Safe to say that things around Woods are in a state of flux.
If he was anyone else, his chances at Firestone, whose uneven terrain will sorely test his knee, wouldn’t be worth discussing.
But he’s Tiger Woods.
Or at least he used to be.
Darren Clarke, who benefited from a series of long text messages from Woods the night before his stunning British Open victory at Royal St George’s last month, thinks his old friend can get back to the top again.
“Knowing Tiger like I do, I don't think he would come back to play unless he was ready to come back and play, both physically and mentally, and ready for the challenge again,” he said.
Actually, he’s come back before and not been ready.
Woods hasn’t won since November 2009, two weeks before his life fell apart, so every tournament since has effectively been a stalled comeback.
Perhaps a more poignant question to Clarke wasn’t whether he thought Woods could come back, but why we should care?
“Good question. Because beneath it all, beneath all the stuff that's happened, self-inflicted or otherwise, he's essentially a really good kid, a man,” Clarke said.
Many others, including Jack Nicklaus, have publicly shared that sentiment.
So maybe he’s a redemption story worth rooting for?
Beyond that, there’s this: Golf just isn’t the same as it was when Woods was at his greatest.
As one of my English colleagues noted the day before the British Open began, there’s just not that same crackle at a major when Woods isn’t there.
“He has been the best player in the world and one of the best players to ever play the game, and I genuinely hope he gets his game back up to the level that it was before,” Clarke said, sounding more like a fan.
“Because it was awesome.”
