If it's April it's time for three things: trees blooming, Red Sox fans kvetching and unsubstantiated rumors about Tiger Woods return to golf. These tales start as whispers around Tour events, then turn into full-throated roars after people on Golf Channel give their informed, but still hypothesized, opinions on the subject, only to see those guesses ("maybe he'll be back at Memorial" or "I heard he might come back in Texas") turn into gospel by a sporting public that wants, nay, needs Tiger back on the course, despite just enjoying a Masters that had the least Tiger talk in two decades.
Still, we yearn. Seeing Rory McIlroy running away with a U.S. Open, like he did at Congressional in 2011, will never be the same as when Tiger did it at Pebble in 2000. When a young Jordan Spieth set records at Augusta last year, it didn't have half the panache of Tiger, wearing baggy black pants and that familiar, loose red Nike shirt, fist pumping at the 1997 Masters. Sports are supposed to be regenerating. Peyton Manning retires and Russell Wilson steps up. Kobe Bryant goes and here's Steph Curry. That's not the way it is in golf. It's Tiger and then everybody else. The so-called Big Three (McIlroy, Spieth, Jason Day - sorry Rickie Fowler, win a major first) is merely at the head of the "everybody else" category.
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Thus it's only natural to want to see Tiger return, if not as his old self, then as at least as a player who can occasionally do things that remind you of his past life as the most dominant golfer who ever lived. And if that's what you want (frankly, it's hard to imagine any golf fan wouldn't want to hear those Sunday cheers for Tiger at least a few more times), then it's time for patience. Tiger Woods shouldn't come back in 2016 - at all.
Wright Thompson has an excellent piece on Tiger at ESPN.com that goes deep on the golfer's desert-wandering phase. The death of Earl Woods is used as a launching point into Tiger's disconnect from the sport he owned and the life he had. Much like Michael Jordan riding the bus after his father was murdered, Tiger went on a path of his own after Earl passed. He was hanging out with Navy SEALs (dangerous) and mistresses (a different kind of dangerous). He was lost.
(Photo by Gregory Shamus/Getty Images)
The injuries didn't help. He's had the Achilles issue, coristone shots, an injury to his other Achilles, elbow pain, a stiff back from sleeping in a hotel bed, back surgery, more back injuries, even more back injuries and then the microdiscectomy that's kept him out since late August. Throw in all the residual pains associated with compensating for the real injuries and there's every bit the reason to believe Tiger's physical injuries have held him back as much as his mental ones. Yet, for all he's been injured over the past eight years, since he won the U.S. Open on a broken leg, Tiger has missed just seven majors, playing in 24 others. How many of those should he have been watching from the couch?
But even while he was lost and even when he was injured, Tiger Woods was still winning. Let's not forget Tiger was No. 1 in the world less than two years ago, won the Player of the Year Award three years ago and has eight wins since 2012, which is the most of anyone in golf, alongside Jason Day. He's not nearly as far gone as most people think. Even when he was battling injuries, Tiger was still better than most of the sport.
(Photo by Sam Greenwood/Getty Images)
And that was the problem. Because he could get by at 85% (or whatever his body was at), Tiger pushed through rather than take the rest he needed. It led to a downward spiral of health.
Though the ESPN piece is content to portray Tiger as sort of a happy recluse, it stays away from the topic of how badly Tiger wants to get back into the sport and maybe show the young'ns a thing or two. Nothing we've seen publicly, professionally or personally suggests he doesn't want to do this. HIs competitiveness is what got him into this injury mess in the first place. Is that just going to flicker away now? It's doubtful.
That's why there's only one thing for Tiger to do now: Keep resting. Keep healing. Keep working on the game. Get that new swing down. Chip hundreds of balls a day. Hit thousands of putts a week. And, above all, don't come back because you can, come back because you're ready. Then, and only then, can we find out if the old cat has some fight left in him yet.
(Photo by Patrick Smith/Getty Images)
