Tiger Woods’ return, Day 3: 'Not quite there, but it’s coming'

Turns out climbing back to the top of the mountain is a hell of a lot tougher than getting there the first time.

Tiger Woods’ Grand Return hit a mud patch late Saturday afternoon, sputtering to a two-under-par 70 and an eight-under overall score after the kind of impressive, four-birdies-in-five-holes start that made even curmudgeons start wondering if maybe this guy was plugging into some long-lost mojo. With every long putt and sand save, every bombed drive and dart-accurate pitch, the years seemed to melt away and Woods seemed the Woods of old.

Woods was playing with Rickie Fowler Saturday, but he could have been playing with Mickelson, or Els, or Garcia, or Norman, or Watson, or even Nicklaus, any of the greats whom Woods had sized up and beaten head-to-head. He was playing in front of galleries of a few dozen, but it wasn’t hard to call up images of him pulling off these kinds of shots in front of thousands stacked 20 deep. Nobody said this comeback would be easy, but Woods was making it look that way as he plowed around the front nine in 32.

And then, well … then reality showed up. Reality reminded Woods that he may have 14 majors, but the last one came when his playing partner Saturday was a freshman in college; reality reminded Woods that he’s 40 and not yet in tournament shape. Woods played the final six holes in three-over par, two bogeys and a closing double, the bleeding only staunched briefly with a 40-foot birdie putt on 17.
Walking 18 holes, particularly over sand that’s as thick as snow, is a demanding task, and Woods’ conditioning isn’t yet up to the task. His numbers show it: he’s 12 strokes worse on the back nine (2-over) than the front (10-under). The 18th hole alone he’s gone double bogey-par-double bogey. And while he wasn’t about to cop to any exhaustion after Thursday’s round, on Saturday he conceded the obvious.

“I’m definitely not as fresh as I would like to be,” he said. “No matter how much you work out, it’s very different than being in playing shape.”

And even being in playing shape doesn’t mean you’re tournament-ready. “Nothing’s quite the same as playing and the waiting and the grinding and the wind and getting the numbers right and camera phones going off and people moving,” he said. “These are all different things that you can’t simulate at home.”

Woods indicated that he’s already exceeded his own expectations, if only because he didn’t have many coming in. “I hadn’t played in a very long time and I didn’t know what I was going to feel like after each round,” he said. “What happened to Rosie [Justin Rose, who tweaked his back and had to withdraw Friday] could have easily happened to me.” That would have been an ugly sight indeed, Woods withdrawing from a tournament once again after all the buildup. And if that was on the table, Woods will have succeeded just by playing all four rounds.
The farther we get from Woods’ glory years, the more impossible they all seem. All the majors, all the moon-shot drives, all the half-mile long putts. Woods offered up a reminder of the good ol’ days early on Saturday, but it was like hearing a favorite song on the radio — there and gone too quickly, leaving only the good memories. No telling when it’ll come around again.