Weekend Wrap

It's the traditional title for our Mondays, though the absence of weekend action makes this one a bit of a misnomer.

Scenes From Down Under - The only actual golf was played in the shadows of the Opera House:

SYDNEY (AP) — Cameron Davis came from six shots behind going into the final round to win the Australian Open by one stroke on Sunday, shooting a 7-under 64 that included 

a birdie on the 18th and an eagle after holing a 100-meter approach shot. 

The 22-year-old Australian finished with an 11-under total of 273 at The Australian Golf Club, where gusty and unpredictable afternoon winds made scoring tough for all four rounds. 

"I didn't know where I was, to be honest, after the third round," Davis said of his six-stroke deficit. "I'm just glad I did enough today to get the job done."

I won't suggest that this young man was unknown to your humble blogger, but he was no better than the second most famous Cameron in the field....

As for the better known players in the field, Spieth at least picked up a nice check....

As for Jason Day, it's perhaps for the best that he's told us not to expect him at Shinnecock....  He did somehow get himself that 54-hole lead, but during the periods that I watched he looked very fetching in his tight Nike duds....  The golf, though, was fairly painful, as he seems to have lost the ability to find a fairway, even when hitting irons.

Yet all the local commentators could talk about was his comments that he wants to get back to dominating the game.  Ironic that, for a guy that hasn't won anything in 18 months....  

The Tour Confidential panel took a break from leftover turkey to opine about Day's prospects for the future, and 

Bamberger: I don't. He's a terrific young guy, good with fans and reporters and playing partners. A huge, big-hearted talent. I just have the feeling his highest priorities are elsewhere. 

Wood: Possibly not all the way to No. 1 in the world again, but he will compete and win more major championships before he's done.

Sens: All the above rings true to me. But let's not forget that Day has also been battling a litany of injuries. You can't be a world-beater if you're not healthy. Day says he's feeling better physically than he has in a while. Let's hope he stays that way.

I can only respond here with a baseball analogy, and not a new one...  Does anyone out there remember Pete Reiser?  In evaluating players, Bill James would typically consider injuries a randomly-occurring phenomenon.... But not for Reiser, who ran into walls with the frequency that other player sued the dugout spittoon.  Like Reiser, Day's full-tilt-boogie golf swing is gonna result in injuries...it's just who he is.

The Tiger Beat - It is, of course, all that anyone in the game wants to talk of at the moment.  You might have caught word about his social game last week:

Hey, I'm sure Mr. Faron was grateful for the invite and Twitter call-out.  Was it an all Taylor-Made foursome?

Mr. Faron Faxon had some fun in a follow-up interview, including this on the game for the day:

We played a casual best ball match with a small wager – President Trump and I played Dustin and Tiger. They played from the back tees at 7,600 yards and we played up to the blue tees at about 6,500 yards. The President was gracious and entertaining. He told some stories, things he loves about the job and things he doesn’t love. I think he was excited to be in that group and we had a lot of fun.

So he's playing the Tiger-tees....  good to know.  But this is the bit that has folks aflutter:

Tiger looked great to me. He was happy and, more than anything, he’s finally pain-free.

The issues he had with the back the last couple of comebacks seem to be gone. He looked effortless, he looked free, he had some power.

I was impressed with how far he hit the ball. Probably on the 10 holes that they were both hitting driver, Tiger hit it past Dustin half the time and Dustin hit it past Tiger half the time. He looked great. I think more than anything, he looked at ease. He was not concerned about swinging hard and going at it with driver. The ball flight, the sound off the club, all of it was right there.

Was DJ testing that new tourney ball?  Otherwise I'm not buying....

That TC panel is milking the subject, first asked to project whether it'll be fantastic or flop:

Michael Bamberger: Such extreme options! Fantastic, I guess. By which I mean he plays four rounds, doesn't hurt himself, shows that the game still brings him some

pleasure, hits good shots, goes 72 holes without a yip.

John Wood: I'll lean toward the fantastic. The three things I would love to see is a pain-free golf swing, a lot of drivers off the tee and, like Michael said, joy. I hope he looks like a junior golfer out there sometimes, with a smile and having fun. I think that'll be a good starting point.

Alan Shipnuck: It's fantastic that he's back. The words of Faxon and, before that, Fowler, have helped stoke the anticipation but they're not helpful for Tiger. The expectations — his and ours — should be very, very low. It's gonna be fun to watch him play golf again and, for now, that's all that matters. One more point: I think the rehab stint was more important for Tiger than we can know. The DUI report made clear how out of control his prescription drug use had become. Tough to play golf like that. If his mind is clear and his body flushed-out from all of those toxins, that could make this comeback much different from all the previous, aborted ones.

Playing the role of Debbie Downer, our own Alan Shipnuck.... I suppose it needed to be said.  The this:

2. The prevailing sentiment seems to be that Woods just needs to play four injury-free rounds for his Hero campaign to be deemed a success. Given all the positive reports we've heard about Tiger's health and game, would you agree?

Bamberger: I haven't seen any positive reports. I've seen some orchestrated PR efforts. It's silly. (Ridiculous, really.) Let him play 10 tournaments and by June we might know a little something. This is four days of easy golf.

Wood: I would. There's also the X-factor in all of this, his caddie Joe LaCava. I mean, the guy has repainted his basement about six times in the last year, his lawn must look like a fairway at Augusta National, he's been to 342 sports and school functions for his two awesome kids, Joe Jr. and Soupy, but has he picked up a golf bag for any reason other than to move it from his trunk to the golf cart? If you didn't know things ain't light. Perhaps we will get him his own pull cart for the practice rounds and pro-am, just so he can ease back into it. We're all here for ya, Joey. Pace yourself. (And congratulations to Joe's wife Megan for finally getting the old man out of the house for a while.)

Shipnuck: The chip-yips still lurk. When Tiger made his return at last year's Hero — deja vu — he looked shaky around the greens. It's folly to expect him to be razor-sharp, but it's important that he doesn't flinch on the shorties with his wedge.

We're all gonna watch, because it's either that or watching It's a Wonderful Life, and we know that has a happy ending... 

But here's the part requiring the irony alert....  We'd all be over the moon if he played exactly as he did last year.  Four rounds with no apparent pain.... decent length and lots of birdies.  yeah, he'll hit a few way crooked and his score won't be anything to speak of, but he'll smile the whole time.   The irony comes when you realize that that meant exactly nothing last year, kind of what Mike Bamberger was getting at above.

And, lastly, this:

3. Assuming Tiger does stay healthy this week, when and where are we most likely to see him play next? 

Bamberger: I would hope and expect Torrey Pines. 

Wood: I agree, Torrey Pines. 

Shipnuck: Why wait til Torrey? Waialae is a perfect course for Tiger to shape shots and play Hoylake-style small ball. He's had so few reps the last four years — if he's truly healthy he should go hard on the West Coast swing and try to build some momentum.

I'm actually concerned about the West Coast, as those early morning rounds are a killer....  Though Passov informs us that Torrey and Dubai are the same week.

Everyone is focused on the lack of a cut at the Hero World, but I'm thinking the bigge rissue for Tiger is no 7:30 tee times in the gloamin'....  because it's cold before the sun comes up and he wa sneeding about two hours to loosen up the back.

I'd also like to share a couple of the more interesting takes on the comeback, first from Golf Digest gearhead Michael Johnson:

As we ready for Tiger Woods’ return (again) to competitive golf, it is not an outrageous

assumption that injury and time have robbed Woods of some clubhead speed. After all, Woods’ last full season in 2013 saw him average 118.3 miles per hour. In limited play in 2017, it was down to 113.85 m.p.h., a number he is more likely to return at. That equates to a distance loss of some eight to 10 yards, begging the question: How can Tiger keep up? 

For starters, it’s not that 114 m.p.h. is slow. In fact, it’s the tour average. But 10 yards is 10 yards. Fortunately for Woods he has one thing going for him in his quest to regain any loss of distance: He’s a very inefficient driver of the golf ball. 

Despite the endless hours pros spend getting “dialed in” to their equipment, not all players have reached their maximum efficiency off the tee, and Woods is a prime example.

We all remember when Phil called Tiger's equipment a joke, as he seemed to leave yards on the table intentionally, partially from his choice of a higher-spinning ball.  Here's a sense of the potential impact:

Woods’ distance efficiency that year was 2.503—meaning he got that many yards per mile per hour of clubhead speed. However since the stat was introduced in 2007, the leader in the category has averaged 2.690 yards per mile per hour. Let’s assume Woods comes back swinging at 114 m.p.h. At the 2.503 number that’s a driving distance of 285.3 yards. However at 2.690 that would increase to 306.7 yards. Those numbers are not fantasy land, either. Last year Shane Lowry had an average clubhead speed of 114.6 m.p.h. and a distance efficiency number of 2.660. That put him at 304.6 yards off the tee.

 Twenty yards is two-less clubs into a green, most certainly not chopped liver....

Jaime Diaz, alternatively, thinks the key for Tiger is to reclaim his inner artiste:

Beyond the “you know it when you see it” yardstick, genius is a difficult thing to measure. As Walter Isaacson, the culture’s leading chronicler of the phenomena, wrote last week in Time Magazine, genius goes beyond simply being really smart. It helps a lot 

when someone is demonstrably the best in the world at something, and perhaps the best of all time. Isaacson, who has written best-selling biographies of Ben Franklin, Steve Jobs, Albert Einstein and Leonardo da Vinci, offered two definitional tenets: “The ability to apply imagination to almost any situation” and “to think like an artist and a scientist.” 

Woods possessed those tools. He was naturally analytical, described by his father as “systems oriented,” who as a teenager became consumed by the mechanics of the golf swing. But all through his best years, he retained a powerful, childlike gift for visualizing his shot and where he wanted his ball to go. In 2007, he described for Golf Digest the process he developed as a grade schooler when playing in the late evenings with his father. 

“Even to this day, when I’m out there struggling and I don’t have my best stuff at all, I’ll go back to, ‘You know what, Daddy, I’m going to put the ball right there. Right there. I’m going to put that little 2-iron right there, Daddy. No problem. I got it.’ Boom, I put it right there …” And the proof would be in shots like his miraculous hole out from left of Augusta’s 16th green in the final round of the 2005 Masters. When asked to define his greatest weapon, Woods would say, “my creative mind.”

In Tiger-speak, that would require him getting in enough reps to get back his golf feelz.....

I'm going to suggest baby steps right now....Let's just hope that this from ESPN's Bob Harig is and remains the case:

"The fact that I don't have any pain in my lower back anymore compared to what I was living with for years. ... it's just remarkable,'' said Woods, who underwent a fourth back surgery in April, which essentially removed the disk that has been causing nerve pain.

"It could be the next step, I just didn't know [when the pain would occur],'' Woods said. "That's tough to live with. And it's been a struggle for years. To finally come out on the good side of it is exciting. I am stiffer. Of course, [his lower back is] fused. But I don't have the pain. Life is so much better.''

As a wise man once said, it is what it is.

I hope to be with you tomorrow, but Wednesday is a travel day.