NASSAU, Bahamas – Tiger Woods’ first competitive rounds since April had a little bit of everything with the Hero World Challenge host predictably rusty on his way to an 18th-place finish in the 20-man field.
For the week, Woods gave glimpses that his game, if not his body, could withstand his desired four- to six-event schedule next year.
“His speed and length are not an issue. He still has plenty of talent in there,” said Rickie Fowler, who was paired with Woods on Friday. “Now we’re coming back to injury 2.0, 6.0, I don’t know where we’re at now, but it’s better when he’s around.”
Here are six things we learned about Tiger 6.0 (?):
Good days and bad
The surgery on his right ankle in April has left Woods with a noticeably altered gait, which devolved into an outright limp by Sunday.
Although the surgery has left Woods’ ankle pain-free, there are still plenty of other areas of concern. On Thursday, when he was asked where he was sore, his only slightly tongue-in-cheek answer was, “Everywhere.”
Still, for the first time since the Genesis Invitational in February he navigated 72 holes and he seemed largely pleased with the state of his game.
“I’m curious just like you guys what this is going to look like,” he said. “I haven’t done it in a while, I haven’t done it with my ankle the way it is now and I was excited each and every day to kind of get through it and kind of start piecing rounds together again.
“Every day I got faster into the round. The first day took me a while to get a handle on it, second day was faster, today was right away. And that’s eventually, when I play on a regular basis, that’s normally how it is.”
Easy power
Although Woods finished eighth in the field in driving distance, the more telling statistic was his strokes gained: off-the-tee numbers, which left him fourth just behind the likes of winner Scottie Scheffler and Viktor Hovland.
Sneaking up on his 48th birthday later this month and slowed by all manner of injuries and ailments, Woods can still hang with the younger players as evidenced by his opening tee shot that traveled 326 yards and was well past playing partner Justin Thomas.
“I’m hitting the ball farther than I did when I first came out on Tour. I’m slower [swing speed], but tech [is better], I’m still able to hit the ball in the middle of the face so there’s always an advantage to do that,” he explained.
Swing 6.0
The most current version of Woods also has a slightly different swing, but unlike those iconic actions he used while working with Butch Harmon, Hank Haney and Sean Foley, the current swing is dictated by what his body is able to do.
“It wasn’t a major swing change. It just is more of a lack of mobility. My ankle really has no mobility anymore,” he explained this week. “I can’t drive my knee like I used to, and obviously I can’t twist like I used to because my back is fused. There’s just a lack of things I can do, but it’s not like I made any major swing changes or I’ve tried to make any changes. I just let me body just tell me what I need to do.”
Limitations
One of the more interesting revelations Woods made this week at Albany was an admission that the assortment of injuries he’s endured throughout his career has limited his options on the course.
“There’s a lot of things I can’t do that I used to be able to do with a golf ball,” he said. “I used to be able to call upon any shape, any shot whenever you wanted and was able to contort myself to those shots. I can’t do that anymore. I’ve always been one that has been able to hit the ball in the middle of the face, so that’s been good.”
Room for improvement
While Woods was largely pleased with his week, there are plenty of areas to work on before next season.
On Saturday, he talked about his rusty short game which left him 16th in the field in strokes gained: around-the-green, but he largely dismissed that as a byproduct of playing a grainy course that’s always among the circuit’s toughest short game tests.
The bigger concern was his par-5 scoring. He was 3 under for the week in par-5 scoring (Albany has five par 5s), which is where he separated himself from the field in his prime.
“I didn’t play the par 5s well at all. Whether it was from the fairway or from the sand or from the bushes, wherever it may be, I didn’t take care of the par 5s at all,” he said. “When you have par 5s that are reachable, you have to play them better than I did.”
He’s been staying busy
It would have been easy to think Woods’ decision to join the Tour’s policy board was ceremonial, but that clearly isn’t the case based on his detailed and direct comments this week about the circuit’s ongoing negotiations with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund and, more importantly, the internal governance review.
“We can’t let that [the June 6 framework agreement] happen again,” he said. “How do we do that, is having six player directors so we control the board and we control what we’re going to do. We’re not going to have what transpired in a few months without our involvement again.”
Evidence of this came Saturday when the board had an extended meeting via video conference call with the framework agreement looming on Dec. 31.
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