Consider yourself warned: The old Tiger is coming
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| Once Tiger Woods gets some putts to fall, watch out. (US Presswire) |
PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. -- For going on 2½ years, the sporting world, not to mention the entire golf industry, has watched to see if Tiger Woods can resurrect his game, or remotely approach the orbit he enjoyed before his personal and professional lives collapsed like a Pebble Beach sandcastle at high tide.
Maybe we weren't setting the bar of expectations high enough.
After two days of watching Woods pound tee shots down fairway after fairway, and knock approach after approach onto the green, playing partner Arjun Atwal offered an assessment that ought to make people at the top of the world rankings cringe.
Granted, Atwal is one of Woods' best friends and a frequent practice partner, but after two solid rounds at the Pebble Beach Pro-Am, nobody was laughing when Atwal said it, either. According to Woods' former Orlando neighbor, the salad days under Hank Haney might have not been the main course.
"I think it's better," Atwal said of Woods' new swing action. "I think he will get better now than he was with Hank, because his misses are not as wild. With Hank, the misses were off the planet."
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Looking very much like a ticking time bomb that is ready to explode, Woods shot a 2-under 68 at Monterey Peninsula on Friday, the worst score he could have posted, and continued to show signs of busting out in a major way.
Affix your helmets and insert your earplugs. You have been duly warned.
After missing a handful of shortish putts on the increasingly bumpy greens, Woods is six shots off the lead and T17 as he heads to Pebble Beach for the weekend. But for once, when he says his game "is so close," he doesn't sound like a guy whistling in the graveyard. The thinking isn't wistful or wishful. Woods has been bopping the ball around the Monterey Bay tracks like it's laser-guided. On Friday, he missed two greens, one of them by six inches. He missed two fairways and had a pair of putts from inside six feet lip out of the cup.
It's not so much the numbers on the scoreboard that indicate a rising tide, it's the other evidentiary metrics. He's hit 23 of 27 fairways for the week and 30 of 36 greens. The short irons have been a little spotty, and the putting has been streaky, but Woods is looking like the storm that blew in off the Pacific Ocean halfway through his round -- it brewed off the coast, all threatening-like, before it began dumping on the tournament.
"It's very close," Woods said. "I got my ball-striking to where I feel very comfortable hitting the shots. I just need to make a couple putts to get on a roll."
In fact, Woods seems like he's ready to burst at the seams, he's so bubbling with unfulfilled potential. Admittedly, nobody had ragged on the guy more often than I have, or missed fewer opportunities to poke fun at his expense. But the golf is a separate issue.
He looks like he could reel off a 62 at any moment. By way of example, Woods was playing so smoothly on Friday, a few scribes endured a three-hour drizzle, partly because it seemed like Woods was poised to do something memorable at any moment.
With two rounds left at Pebble Beach, where he shot 63-64 on the weekend in 1997 and shot 66 on Saturday at the 2010 U.S. Open, Woods needs to scrape a few more 15-footers into the hole and he might just make a run at leader Charlie Wi, who is 12 under.
This rosy proclamation isn't just about the apparent state of his game, but his state of mind, too. He's been unusually chatty this week, seems to actually be enjoying the interminably long 5 1/2-hour rounds, and says he's "at peace" with his new personal circumstances.
Maybe it's partly because he's been playing well and reeling off miles of stress-free pars, but he certainly hasn't been his formerly grumpy self. The 10th hole was a perfect example. After Woods strafed the par-5 hole with another drive down the middle, he tried to reach the green with a 3-wood and yanked the shot into the gallery, where it clipped a guy in a San Francisco Giants jacket.
The man was informed that Woods might give him a keepsake in exchange for his pain and suffering, but that since the former world No. 1 is a lifelong Los Angeles Dodgers devotee, the man might want to remove the jacket.
"He is?" the man said of Woods' hardball loyalties. "Then he can keep whatever it is."
The gallery roared. Woods then arrived, asked if anybody was hurt, and was told that the fan he'd nicked was a loyal Giants follower.
"You're not getting anything, then," Woods smirked, and the crowd erupted again.
Even the rain didn't dampen the mood, so to speak, though Woods got caught in the storm without an umbrella.
"My dad always said, you can only get wet once," he deadpanned.
If he can keep the ball dry at Pebble, he seems to be playing well enough to chase down Wi, a former college rival. Woods might have a chance to end his career-long 28-month winless skein in official PGA Tour play.
"I gotta go get it tomorrow," Woods said.
For the first time in forever, that seemed like a plausible possibility, if not a darned good likelihood.
