Someone mention Tiger’s back? 
mashed potatoes!
Can I bump a 4 yr+ dormant thread? Guess so
Bump!!
Tiger’s back. Comeback #12?
anyone care? anyone going to watch?
Playing in his own tournament, Hero World Challenge, in the Bahamas with a 18-man field. The other 17 players are ranked in the top 32. Tiger is ranked #1199.
In his last comeback, exactly one year ago, he played in this tournament, finished 15th out of 17 players. But he tied for the most birdies made (so he made a bunch of bogeys and others). That gave the Tiger faithful reason for optimism. But 2 months later he played in two tournaments, Missing the Cut in San Diego where he has won 8 times before and Withdrawing in Dubai with “Back Spasms”.
He has announced that he is pain-free, but we have heard that before. We heard it six months ago, a week before he was busted for DUI with a cocktail of five controlled substances in his bloodstream.
Yes I will watch. Reports from ESPN and Golf Channel says he is swinging and playing well. The media over there are high fiving themselves with the over the top hype. myeh. This is an 18 player exhibition during most players off season. the two highest ranked players (Dustin and Jordan) have played one tournament in two months. #3 player (Justin Thomas) has not played in 6 weeks.
Seen reports that the week will be a success for Woods if he finishes 72 holes. I don’t know how much lower the bar can get considering he has either played or practice every day for the better part of a months.
Would be lovely (IMO) if his latest efforts were met with a collective shrug. We’ll see what he is able to bring. But until he does something between the ropes, my preference would be for the media to forego the traditional Tiger fellating. Concentrate their efforts on the young guys who are actually doing it.
Realistically, I’d suggest we could have an over/under for when he undergoes his next surgery.
Any attention to Tiger should be segregated as a “human interest” story, and presented in a manner that it doesn’t interfere with people who are interested in watching sport.
Stay classy.
With all those drugs in his system of course he was pain-free.
Funny, to refer to “class” in a thread concerning Tiger! 
Hey, you love the guy. We all know that. I don’t.
yep, but disingenuous, not entirely truthful. But that is who Tiger is. Why would I expect anything different?
Exactly. Only a moron would expect an athlete preparing to enter competition to say he was in poor shape and couldn’t possibly win. And not even a moron would expect someone to air his intimate medical details in public.
By the way, I thought your previous post was a very good summary of Tiger’s situation. I do think it will be a good sign if he can play 72 holes under tournament conditions without any physical problems. I don’t care how many rounds he played while practicing – you typically don’t cool off while practicing, either banging balls on the range, or playing with a cart and hitting as many shots as you want until you like one. It’s a lot harder on the body to hit one shot every five minutes or so, just like it would be a lot harder on your car’s engine to start it and shut it off every five minutes than to cruise at 60 all day.
He just stiffed a short pitch as I write this, one of his few good short shots. His driving and putting are better than I expected, but he’s chunked a lot of chips, and has sliced a couple of medium range clubs, so he’s not scoring that well. He’s only even par for the par 5’s, which he should be feasting on, the way he’s driving. Even so, he’s just one off the lead right now, so I’d say that’s much better than expected. But he has yet to finish the round, let alone the week.
I think he’ll turn 42 in a couple of weeks, so realistically, he’s too old now to catch Jack – even Jack only won one major after age 40. So Jack still has the best career of all time. But IMO Tiger played the best golf ever seen over any ten-year period.
Aaand he just hit it in the junk. I guess we’ll find out whether that awful drive was the exception, or just returning to the norm.
I think it would be pretty damn hard for anyone to argue with that statement.
-3
No arguments either way on that. Except if you make it 15 years…[shutting up now :D]
Sure, I’ll make it 15, though IMO ten should be enough to determine the GOAT. Jack has him at 25 years, though.
A very encouraging 68 today. He was at or near the lead for quite a while, until Hoffman went nuts. Outdrove Stenson by 25 yards on some holes, and nothing too far off line. Short game much better today, but putting much worse – his distance was way off on a few long putts. Best of all, there was a shot he had to dig out of a plugged lie in the sand, a tester for his bad back, and he showed no signs of pain or tightness.
Goddam it, just when I thought I could drop to a lower tier in my cable package, looks like I’ll have to keep the Golf Channel.
Third round complete; current standings here. Not looking good.
He may be back, but I’m through hailing him. We’ve seen it so many times: solid first two rounds, allllll the crowing about how he’s returning to his own form and will start kicking butt again, and he completely drops off from there. Remember, too, that this is the last year of his five-year Players Championship exemption, so either he makes something happen or he has to try to pick up the pieces on the Web.com Tour.
The good news is that he started early in the season, so there’s plenty of time to rack up FedEx Cup points, but only if he continues taking care of his back and if he can start putting four good days together again. And that’s definite “good luck, you’ll need it” territory for me.
I’ll admit, though, it’s going to be interesting seeing him go up against Sergio Garcia as a big underdog. Pretty sure nearly all of us never thought we’d see the day.
Yeah, a bad round at 75. But the course kicked almost everybody’s ass today; nobody in the 60’s, and only five guys under par. A good sign is that he seemed to right the ship mid-round, with only one guy shooting a lower score on the back nine. If he has a decent round tomorrow, i.e. only one bad round for the week, he will have exceeded my expectations.
No, I’m pretty sure he has 20 career wins, so he has a lifetime exemption on the PGA tour, as if any sponsor in the world wouldn’t give him one anyway. Also a past winner exemption to most events on tour. And if I recall correctly, he’s automatically in three of the four majors until he’s too old to play, and the US Open through next year. So the Players and the WGCs are about the only events he can’t play if he wants to.
But like you, I have tempered my expectations. He probably won’t win more than five or six majors next year, plus the Stanley Cup and the Iron Throne.
Could have been worse, and at least he finished with a decent round. Exact middle of the pack. Call my cynical, but I expect him to drop out again this season. It is “interesting” to see him with just the beginnings of a paunch. Welcome to the back 9 of life, Tiger! 
Considering that the “pack” comprises some of the very best golfers in the world, that’s not too shabby – it implies that he’s playing at a world top 20 level already. Yes, it’s an off-season event, but it’s mid-season for the Euro players, and even some of the Americans were playing in the HSBC a month ago, including world #1 Dustin Johnson, whom Tiger beat this week. They certainly weren’t as rusty as Tiger, so he has a lot more room for improvement than they do.
He’s had that for a couple of years. And it looks like he’s had some turf maintenance on his bald spot. But for a guy who had back surgery earlier this year, he looks to be in great shape. Not only did his back seem to take everything he gave it this week, but he was bouncing off his knees after close putts, so they must be feeling good, too.
And he seems to be stronger mentally, too – he even drove it well on the first tee, which he didn’t often do even during his prime. He’s been kind of a head case most of his career, hitting wild drives off the first tee even when he played great otherwise.
I guess the test will be when he has to hit a long recovery shot out of US Open-like rough. I will be very pleasantly surprised if he has no WDs next year. But IF he can stay healthy, he ought to be able to win when he has a good week. That’s not like at his peak, when he could win even during an average week, but I don’t buy the popular wisdom that the field has passed him by. We’ve seen guys from Tiger’s generation like Zach, Els, Mickelson, and Garcia win majors fairly recently. Not to mention even older guys like Clarke and Cabrera. If they can win, so can Tiger.
I won’t say I see four more major wins in his future, but I can easily see four more PGA wins, which would break Snead’s record, and make Tiger first and second in wins and majors, while Jack is third and first. Since most of Tiger’s regular tour wins were against stronger fields than most of Jack’s majors, I would withdraw my earlier statement, and say Tiger had the better career.
Correct, he has a lifetime exemption but there are performance requirements. The Jerry Barber rule, a player has to be within 3 strokes of the average score in the events he plays.
There are no longer lifetime exemptions for winning tour events. Some are grandfathered in, like Hilton Head, but I think most of those were eliminated before 1996.
and he sure hasn’t won “Most Events” on Tour. (never (some never played) won these current tournaments: Hawaii, Palm Springs, LA, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Tampa, Houston, Hilton Head, San Antonio, NOLA, Colonial, Memphis, Hartford, Alabama, Greenbrier, Quad Cities, Reno, Greensboro, Northern Trust (NYC), Napa, CIMB, HSBC, Korea, Mayakoba, Sea Island, Mayakoba