Note to readers: This post was written yesterday morning but due to Blogger issues would not publish. It's not all that timely any more, but lots of time went into it.
While no one knew what to expect, no one expected THAT.
From snap-hooking his opening drive out of bounds to a bad case of the chili dips, Tiger
Nice finish, but about that divot... Woods struggled to take his game from the range to the course in his first competitive round since August.
Woods ddidn'tmake a birdie until the 12th hole Thursday en route to shooting 5-over 77 in the first round of the Hero World Challenge at Isleworth Golf and Country Club. Woods trails first-round leader Jordan Spieth by 11 strokes and was four strokes higher than any of the other 17 players in the field.
I did like the header on this Dave Shedloski item:
Tiger Woods' first round in four months: Call it torture by 77 cuts
Dave accompanies Tiger into glass-half-full mode with this:
The best thing that can be said about Tiger’s first public golf since missing the cut at thePGA Championship in August was that he didn't aggravate his surgically-repaired back. That and he made one birdie, a one-footer at the 12th.
Oh, sure, there was more. “Shot patterns were fantastic. And as I think all of you saw, I got my power back and I got my speed back. It’s nice to be able to start launching it again. That’s a very good sign.”
That said, his new-old swing didn't do him many favors on his former home course, and his short game came up, well, considerably short of the standards of your average 20-handicapper, let alone the No. 24 player in the world.
I guess we'll need to add "Shot patterns" to our Tiger dictionary... Doug Ferguson sums up the short-game woes for us:
He hadn't seen anything like it in longer than he can remember, and it was shocking.
Woods flubbed four chips. He took two shots to get out of a bunker on the par-5 seventh hole. He didn't have a birdie putt inside 20 feet until the 11th hole. And on the four birdie chances he had inside 10 feet on the back nine, he made only one of them. And that was a tap-in.
None of us has, Tiger. Cameron Morfit goes looking for causes:
By this time people were starting to talk. Did he have vertigo? Had an optometrist botched his prescription? Watching Woods mangle all these chip shots was like watching Bobby Flay burn all the grilled cheese sandwiches.
After blistering a drive down the fairway at the par-5 17th, and getting up around the green with his second shot, Woods chunked his fourth chip of the day, this time recovering to save par. “It certainly is surprising that I could hit chip shots that poorly,” he said afterward. “I just flubbed ’em.”
Vertigo? That's a good one... I saw only a few minutes of the coverage, but was lucky enough to catch the chunk at No. 17. Lots of discussion about the difficulty of chipping at Isleworth, including this from the Hankster:
OK, that is definitely true, at least for the 20-handicapper. And a big shout-out to Alex Myers at The Loop for finding and posting this Vine of all four chunks:
It's always quite shocking to see world class players suck, especially in cases like this when they're making the very error that torments amateurs, the dreaded decel. And it's resemblance yo his play in 2014 is unmistakable, it's still only 18 holes after months of being a soccer Dad.
We'll of course be watching because we don't have much else to occupy our golf-idle minds, but we're a long way from any golf that matters. We'll see Tiger again at Torrey in late January, but it will be Florida in March before we can render any meaningful judgments on his game.
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