Charge it off to the Chinese New Year. New clothes from Nike. Or even Rocco Redux. Whatever the reason, the Woods who made his first US appearance in San Diego, was not quite the one many expected or hoped to see. But don’t believe that he “mailed it in,” as some suggested. It’s just not his style.
There are plenty of reasons we know this.
- If Woods decided he didn’t want to play, he could have withdrawn earlier in the week. He didn’t have to suffer through a week when he was not ready or felt his game was not ready.
- If Woods didn’t like the way he was playing, he could have caught the flu and WD’d on Thursday or Friday. As the legendary columnist Jim Murray once pointed out, there are any number of reasons a golfer can catch the flu. Murray contended that double bogeys were the leading cause of flu on the PGA Tour, but Murray added that anything can cause it. Four putting. The ill-timed shank. A case of the hooks. The flu, Murray contended, can strike at any time, and the causes are just too numerous to mention.
- We don’t know if Woods’ restructured knee means he has to change his golf swing. Maybe he can’t make the same move with his legs that he made for 25 years. Maybe his doctors said something like, “You can’t do this anymore or you will be a cripple. You have to find a different way to swing.” Logically speaking, what he was doing before with his swing wrecked his knee. So the change may be essential, no matter how long it takes.
- He’s not known as a quitter. There are many times when Tiger Woods has had indifferent rounds, and at those moments he has often said something like, “I tried my hardest on every shot.” In other words, I just didn’t have it today.
- Woods admitted on Sunday at Torrey Pines that his round was poor and expressed some surprise about it. “I hit it as pure as I could possibly hit it starting out and got nothing out of it,” he said. “As the round went on, I progressively got worse with my golf swing.”
- Even Jack Nicklaus, the gold standard in golf, had years when he did not play up to his expectations or those of others. Nicklaus said several years ago that we should anticipate times when people believe that Woods has totally lost his game for one reason or another. Nicklaus said people thought the same thing about him several times during his career. Did anyone think Nicklaus gave up? No, his MO was to wait around for other people to give up.
- Woods knows the only way out is through. “How else are you going to get better? You've got to do it,” he said at Torrey Pines. “It takes reps and it takes reps under competition. You can't be afraid to go ahead and try it.” He didn’t add, even if I have to hit really awful shots in public with millions of people watching.
- Woods now knows what he can’t do in a tournament, and he has new things to practice. “We have some things that we need to work on. Sean and I have been talking about it every night,” Woods said. Can you imagine the size of his to do list?
- Woods says his short game will return with practice. “I didn't focus on my short game as much as I needed to,” he said talking about the end of 2010 and adding that the reason was because he was focused on the swing change. “This off-season is I was able to work on my putting and my stroke and go back to my old keys and old feels. Just putting in the work. It takes thousands of balls.” OK, maybe it will take a half million.
- There may have been a Tiger in the Tank at Exxon in 1959, but there is no Tank in the Tiger in 2011 or any other time. He’s too hard on himself to tank, no matter what anyone else thought. Disgust is different than tanking. In 2008, after winning in February, Woods played in pain at the 2008 US Open because he played too soon after a surgical procedure he had after The Masters. “It was stupid to play and go through that much pain,” he said. “I kept re-breaking the leg. So I broke it more than what it was in the beginning of the week. I have a little bit of a hard-headed side to me.”
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