Tiger Woods is Back!

A Little non-Tiger News
McIlroy's tour set to continue at Honda Classic By TIM REYNOLDS AP Sports Writer Wednesday, March 04, 2009

This is a Feb. 28, 2009 file photo showing Rory McIlroy, of Northern Ireland, hitting his pitch shot to the 13th green, setting up a birdie during his quarterfinal match against Geoff Ogilvy, at the Accenture Match Play Championship in Marana, Ariz. McIlroy knows all eyes are on him, and the 19-year-old from Northern Ireland is loving it. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin, File) PALM BEACH GARDENS, Fla. (AP)






Rory McIlroy is going through his schedule, sounding remarkably unimpressed.

Honda Classic this week. Doral next week. A quick trip home. Back to the United States for a round at Augusta National, maybe even a practice round with Tiger Woods in there somewhere.

It's a glitzy itinerary for just about any pro golfer. For the 19-year-old from Northern Ireland, it's somehow no big deal.

"I just go out and play golf, talk about what I've been doing, and everything else takes care of itself," McIlroy said.

He makes it all sound simple.

Golf's latest Next Big Thing is at PGA National this week, where Sergio Garcia, Camilo Villegas and defending champion Ernie Els headline the field at the Honda. But there's going to be plenty of eyes on the teen, who's already No. 16 in the world rankings and gave eventual champion Geoff Ogilvy all he wanted last week at Match Play before losing 2 and 1 in the quarterfinals.

McIlroy has already won at Dubai, and with a victory this week or at Doral, could become the PGA Tour's youngest winner.

"He's what I was 10 years ago," Garcia said.

As almost always, the South Florida wind is blowing. The greens are even a touch quicker than last year and many are convinced that if anyone matches Els' 6-under 274 from a year ago, he will be the guy walking away with $1,008,000 on Sunday.

McIlroy says he's looking forward to the daunting challenge of the Jack Nicklaus design.

"I think especially with the breeze and the last few holes, it's going to make for a pretty interesting finish as it always does," McIlroy said. "It will be a good week, and one I'm looking forward to."

There usually seems to be some young player on tour facing lofty expectations, and not everyone, of course, lives up to the billing.

But McIlroy is already commanding respect.

"Definitely one of the superstars of the future," said Robert Allenby, who lives just down the road from PGA National. "He's got a great talent. ... I think he's going to be fantastic for the tournament this week. He'll be definitely one of the favorites to win for sure, with the way he's been playing."

That may be true, although it's hard to handicap any tournament that doesn't include Tiger Woods. And at PGA National, a few bad swings can send anyone freefalling down the leaderboard.

Slow and steady is the preferred method to win at the Honda, something Els managed last year and Mark Wilson - who's coming off a win in Mexico last week - did the year before that.

"The one-shot-at-a-time motto is something my mom gave me when I was in junior golf and that's what I try to do every week," Wilson said. "And on a course like this where par is good, you've just got to hang in there."

PGA National is a long par-70, with it's lure being the "Bear's Trap," a stretch of holes 15, 16 and 17 that's a nod to Nicklaus and has par-3's at its beginning and end. There's some tricky short holes, some par-4's that are reachable only with long irons if the wind's blowing strongly, and missing on the wrong side of many greens will just take par out of play.

Sounds brutal, but players love the test.

"The course looks in great shape and looking forward to playing it," said Garcia, who's up to No. 2 in the world and could further close the gap on Woods for the top spot this week. "Obviously, it's a tough course. We know that. And you have to be very patient throughout the week."

Not every 19-year-old could have that patience.

By now, though, dealing with situations like this is old hat for McIlroy. He started really turning heads with a sensational opening round at Carnoustie two years ago, and simply doesn't seemed fazed by all the attention on him these days, either.

Woods chased Nicklaus as a kid, now-famously taping a list of Nicklaus' accomplishments on his bedroom wall growing up. On McIlroy's wall, there was a copy of Woods' scorecard from the 1997 Masters.

"Any new kid that comes out is going to be compared to Tiger because he has been the best of the last 10 or 15 years, and he might be the greatest golfer of all time by the time he finishes," McIlroy said. "So it doesn't bother me. You have to have someone to compare yourself against. ... And if I can get anywhere close to him, I'll be very happy."

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Tiger Watch: What's next for Woods? Tiger Woods' eagerly awaited comeback fizzled out in the desert heat of Arizona, according to Eugene YS Han.

He will now be at home resting his knee and changing diapers, whilst Paul Casey and Geoff Ogilvy slug it out in the final of the WGC-Accenture World Match Play Championship.

Although his exit at the hands of South African Tim Clark came as a mini-upset, there can be little doubt that Woods would have been fully aware that the Arizona final might prove a bridge too far.

Woods' albeit brief outing proved, however, to be the ideal comeback given the nature of match play.

The American could play at his own preferred pace without the hassle of counting his strokes at the end of a day. In match play, Woods can concentrate on his opponent and each hole.

But of course, the danger is that it is a knock-out event, and the possibly of heading home for an early bath is never far away. And so. That's what happened to Woods.

One can't really expect miracles from Woods here - he reserves them only for major tournaments. He will be conserving his energy for the Masters when he is looking to add to his already impressive tally of 14 in pursuit of the legendary Jack Nicklaus (18). At 33, Woods knows that his time is running out.

Here is a look at the likely tournaments Woods could participate in before he heads to Augusta:

12 March

Tournament: WGC-CA Championship @ Doral Golf Resort in Miami, Florida.

Format: Stroke Play (Winnings: US$8,500,000)

History: Woods has won this tournament six times out nine occasions. Geoff Ogilvy is the defending champion.

Tiger sighting: 4/5

26 March

Tournament: Arnold Palmer Invitational @ Bay Hill Club & Lodge in Orlando, Florida.

Format: Stroke Play (Winnings: US$6,000,000)

History: From 2000 to 2003, Woods dominated by winning the PGA tour event four times in a row and became only the fourth golfer to do so on the tour. Woods also won last year to bring his tally to five in this event.

Tiger sighting: 4.5/5 - it was his last PGA tour event win before he won the the US Open last year.

6 April

Tournament: The Masters @ the Augusta National Golf Club in Augusta, Georgia.

Format: Stroke Play (Winnings: US$7,000,000)

History: Woods has won the Masters four times - the first time, at just 21, he demolished the field by winning with 12 shots - setting the a tournament four-day scoring record. He would go on to win the Masters tournament in 2001, 2002 and 2005. Trevor Immelman is the golfer presently with the green jacket.

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Tiger Ousted by Tim Clark to End His Hopes of a Win!
by Ryan McKnight 2:40pm PST, 26 February, 2009

The eye of the Tiger got blinded today. Tiger Woods is back but not completely. Tiger started today's match against Tim Clark, the 32nd ranked golfer in the world and 8th seed in this brackett, and got showed up. Tim Clark won today based on solid shot making which led him to 5 under through the last 6 holes and did not let up on Tiger.  He finally put Tiger away with an amazing shot on the par 3, 16th hole to end Tiger's, and all of his fans, hopes of a miracle comeback.
Tiger overall had some poor shots today mixed with some amazing shots and just couldn't recover. One of his amazing hit was out of a green side bunker on the 14th. He lined up his shot and with a hop or two chipped it right in the hole. Congratulations to Tim Clark.
We'll all be sitting back waiting for Tiger's next outing and waiting for him to wow us.

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Tiger Woods Fires First Shot In Comeback
By Ian Chadband in Marana
Telegraph.co.uk
Last Updated: 7:56PM GMT 25 Feb 2009

So much global hype has pursued Tiger Woods's comeback that when he teed off at Dove Mountain on Wednesday, his perfect opening drive would doubtless have been enshrined by Americans as the latest sporting incarnation of the "shot heard around the world".
Only, after the eternal wait of 254 days, the most familiar face on planet sport got delayed and still had to wait just six minutes more before being able to strike his feverishly-awaited opening blow.

Everything had been choreographed perfectly. Beautiful sunshine at the WGC Accenture Matchplay Championship, massive galleries surrounding the opening tee at the Ritz-Carlton course as Woods prepared to play Australian Brendan Jones and TV ready to broadcast history worldwide.

Not only had the Golf Channel here timed its telecast to start precisely two minutes before Woods's12.02pm tee off time but it had also reunited that most celebrated of double acts, Nick Faldo and Paul Azinger, to talk it up.

The only problem was that somebody had forgot to tell Stewart Cink and Richard Sterne, whose first round match quite inconveniently was tied after 18 holes, thus meaning they had to play their first extra hole before Woods and Jones's start.

Cink had the mickey taken out of him by the thousands of fans who had been lining the fairways three or four deep for hours waiting for the big moment.

Yet when Woods finally emerged from the practice green chomping on a banana as if he hadn't a care in the world, the massive roar suggested it was all going to be well worth the wait for them.

His tee shot, a three wood, just landed softly in the right hand side of the fairway; he couldn't have walked up and placed it better. An approach to 6ft followed, then a birdie; goodness, it was as if he had never been away.

For once, even the Ryder Cup captains in the commentary booth were agreed that this was a great moment for the game. Yet one of the more intriguing aspects of the week in this Wild West setting was how the fastest gun might fare in a changed landscape for his sport, with a host of young guns ready to test his trigger finger.

For while he has been away, the kids have been at play and Woods, for whom his sport has long been searching for a serious rivalry, welcomed the emergence of the likes of Camilo Villegas and the much-touted 'new Tiger' Anthony Kim, not to mention Rory McIlroy, the teenage sensation from Northern Ireland.

"I think it's great. It's a new young crop of players and it's good to see the game is youthful," Woods enthused on the eve of the tournament. "It's a different generation than mine but I think it's great to see. We need that injection of new blood.

"It's just a matter of them getting the experience and playing well and it's good to see they're winning tournaments around the world."

Woods may have made himself sound like an OAP rather than a bristlingly fit 33-year-old but he's bound to feel ancient watching Villegas – "He's got flash, panache and a take-no-prisoners approach to golf," according to the tournament programme – in action.

Neither the Colombian nor Kim were hanging about as they posted their own precocious messages to Woods by racing to complete the fastest victories of the day.

Kim eventually nipped home first, hammering Lin Wen-Tang 7 & 5 and hardly having to exert himself to do so, as the Taiwanese imploded with seven bogeys in just 13 holes.

Villegas, though, was rampant mood, making light of greens so wildly sloping that he said he'd never seen anything like them before. Yet he still recorded five birdies as he put paid to Australian Rod Pampling by the 12th hole.

Among the early starters in the British contingent, Lee Westwood, despite his body clock adamantly refusing to tell him the real time, had to produce some fine golf, going around in a bogey-free five under par, before he was finally able to subdue Thailand's Prayad Marksaeng at the 17th hole.

"I know I have not slept for more than three hours in a row for two weeks now," smiled Westwood, who had played in the Johnnie Walker Classic in Perth last week.

"I only woke a couple of times last night but it was a bonus being first out this morning as I've been up at 5am anyway and there was almost no need to set an alarm clock."

He was certainly wide-awake by the time he reached the 16th and effectively clinched victory with a brilliant eight-iron approach to within 18 inches of the pin.

A fine morning for the English continued with Westwood's Nottinghamshire mate Oliver Wilson, also carding five birdies, enjoying a notable 3 and 1 victory over K J Choi.

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Accenture Match Play Championship Pairings

Wednesday's Accenture Match Play Championship round with have millions of eyes tuned to witness the rebirth of golf's greatest modern super hero. Tiger Woods will be pairing up with Australian Brendan Jones. I expect Jones will be wide eyed with anticipation.
If you still care anything about the other 31 matches that will be taking place tomorrow if listed them here. You can also download a PDF version for your printing pleasure, that link is at the bottom of this brackets just below.

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What are Woods' chances in comeback tourney?
By Tod Leonard, Union-Tribune Staff Writer 2:00 a.m. February 24, 2009

Tiger Woods, left foreground, warms up on the driving range as a crowd of media surrounds him at the World Golf Championships Accenture Match Play Championship Tuesday in Marana, Ariz. - Associated Press





 When Rocco Mediate flat out GUARANTEED that Tiger Woods would win the WGC-Accenture Match Play Championship this week, eight months after Woods struck his last competitive shot, a few qualifiers needed to be considered.

Mediate is a devout admirer of all things Tiger. At times, he is prone to good-natured hyperbole.

And Mediate played his fanny off last June in the U.S. Open at Torrey Pines and still got beat by the One-Legged Man in Woods, who was playing with a blown-out knee ligament, tattered cartilage and tibia fractures.

It's no wonder Mediate probably thinks Woords can lift a semi-truck over his head or produce fire with a mere stare.

Yet, if Mediate is right on this one, and Woods pulls off six straight victories in matches that could require a combined 126 holes or more, we'll have to drink whatever Kool-Aid (in this case, Tigerade) Rocco's been guzzling.

By all logic, Woods should have as much chance of hoisting the trophy come Sunday as he has of spending his off-hours in Marana, Ariz., snowboarding among the Saguaro cacti.

No matter how much Woods has practiced, no matter how many balls he's hit, no matter how good his leg feels, no matter how much cash he's taken off his buddies in Orlando, he knows there is no way to duplicate the must-have drive or the 10-foot putt for the win. And eight months removed from that pressure is a long time.

Asked last week about his biggest concern, Woods said, “I think it's whether or not my game's sharp. It's one thing to do it in a practice environment. But it's a totally different deal to do it in a PGA Tour event against the best players in the world. That's something that I'm looking forward to the challenge.”

Before this week, Woods hadn't seen the tournament's new course, the Ritz-Carlton Golf Club. At 7,849 yards, it's the longest course on the tour, which certainly can't hurt a bomber like Tiger. You never know, though, when a course will or won't fit his eye. He'd no doubt be more comfortable heading back to The Gallery track on which he won last year, hammering Stewart Cink 8 and 7 in the final.

That Woods is making his return in match play is interesting. It can be said that he excels at it, and therefore has an advantage. As Phil Mickelson pointed out Sunday, “Every round of match play is like the final round,” and nobody is more clutch than Woods.

But he could come back, only to have a few bad holes and get upset by first-round foe Brendan Jones, a little-known Aussie from the tiny retirement coastal town of Tuross Head (pop. 2,000).

Jones, 33, has made his professional hay with eight wins on the second-tier Japan Tour, and he was so convinced that he'd fall out of the top 64 ranked players in the world by now that he sat on the couch most of the offseason instead of practicing.

Now he draws the world's best player in his “world is watching” return.

“I've never met Tiger,” Jones said yesterday. “First thing I will probably say to Tiger is, 'You know, can I have three (strokes) a side?' Maybe one more on the front (nine), in case I don't get to the back.”

Friends have been pumping Jones up, telling him it's match play, that anything can happen.

“Pretty much everybody has said, if things don't go your way, just take out his knee,” Jones joked. “I hope it doesn't get to that.”

Ah, the knee. It is the X-factor in this whole equation. Woods insists it feels great, that he is without pain for the first time in years. “That's a very comforting feeling, hitting the golf ball and not having your bones slide all over the place,” Woods said last week.

But he fashioned his swing to adapt to that weak knee, and he did pretty well for himself, winning four of the six times he played last year. We all know how the slightest of physical changes can make a huge difference in mechanics. There are guys who lose a few pounds and can't play the same.

That's why my bet would be that we see some evidence of rust, that it takes some time before Tiger is back to greatness. It might take a month; it could take a year. It's what we would expect of anyone else.

Rocco's superhero might think differently.



Tod Leonard: (619) 293-1858; tod.leonard@uniontrib.com

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Too much to expect Tiger to swing back into the old routine this week
Published Date: 24 February 2009 By Mike Aitken

PERHAPS not since Ben Hogan made that astonishing comeback at the Los Angeles Open in 1950 from a destructive car crash the previous year has any golfer's recovery from injury been as eagerly anticipated as Tiger Woods' return to competition tomorrow in Arizona.
When Woods tees off against Brendan Jones, a little-known Australian, in the World Match Play at Dove Mountain in Tucson, many expect the world No 1 to perform with even more distinction than he did on his previous appearance at the US Open last June.

Whether this is fair on Woods is a moot point. Not only was Tiger's victory in a play-off at Torrey Pines truly extraordinary – he shrugged aside the pain of four stress fractures in his left leg as well as a torn anterior cruciate ligament – but it needs to be remembered he's undergone significant knee surgery and didn't play any golf whatsoever for five months.

In all the circumstances is it reasonable after eight months away from competitive golf to expect Woods to click back into the old routine and carry on exactly where he left off?

The short answer to that question, of course, is 'No'.

In almost any other sport, even the greatest athletes would expect to need game time to recapture past glories after such a protracted lay-off. The perception of Woods as a golfing Superman is so well established, mind you, that you almost expect to see him re-appear in the desert wearing a cape and tights rather than a Nike cap.

Yet for all his physical strength, extraordinary mental resilience and glorious talent, Tiger is a mere mortal with the same frailties in his joints as other men. The winner of 14 major championships has now undergone surgery on the same knee no fewer than four times and it's anyone's guess what the future holds.

Mentally, it's reasonable to expect Tiger will be more ambitious than ever to surpass Jack Nicklaus' record haul of 18 victories. As Padraig Harrington, who took advantage of the world No 1's absence last summer to win both the Open and US PGA championships, noted: "I actually think he'll come back better. When something is taken away from you, you want it even more."

Physically, though, it remains to be seen how Woods is affected. The left knee plays a prominent part in executing the swing. Ernie Els, who also has undergone surgery to repair a torn ligament, doesn't minimise its meaning. "You know, your left knee is very important in the golf swing," recalled the big South African. "I mean, I still felt it at least a year, a year and a half after the surgery. So it's something that's major. Every time you asked me about my knee, I said it was fine, but it wasn't."

Unlike contact sports, Woods won't have to fret over the risk of making a tackle or colliding with an opponent. That said, even if his knee comes through the test of competition without flinching, it's possible, after such a long absence, that other parts of his body may react to the stress of rivalry. Just think of how Eduardo, nine months after a leg break, made such a notable comeback for Arsenal earlier this month, scoring twice against Cardiff in the FA Cup, only to pick up a hamstring injury.

As yet, it's not clear exactly what changes Tiger has made to his swing in order to protect his knee. Hank Haney, his coach, says we'll notice an adjustment in the finish. "In practice, Tiger's been working on the same stuff that he's always been working on, but he'll be able to do it with a strong leg now," he said. "It will be a little different in the finish because his knee doesn't give way. But Tiger is human. He has played one tournament in ten months."

Steve Williams, his caddie, confirmed there were tweaks. "He's had to modify his swing a little bit to accommodate his knee, but the guy always finds a way," said the Kiwi. "I'm a little nervous myself to see how he's going to come back."

Woods' former coach, Butch Harmon, says he would have advised the golfer to utilise "more of an old-school swing with a knee-drive motion". One of golf's foremost teachers, Harmon pondered: "How good will he be? There are two schools of thought. One says that he will be stronger and fitter than ever. The other says that after four surgeries on the same knee, it can't be as strong."

What isn't up for debate is either how much golf has missed Tiger or how much the game needs him back. The TV audience for golf in America slumped during his absence. One of the reasons Tiger's peers have talked up his comeback is because they have as much of a vested interest in his success as he does.

Of course, you don't bet against brilliance. Back in 1950, no-one posted a lower 72-hole score than Hogan on his comeback just 11 months after colliding with a Greyhound bus. Unfortunately for Hogan, Sam Snead matched his efforts and won the play-off.

Even so, it was a remarkable effort, which earlier prompted Cary Middlecoff to describe Hogan as a walking miracle. "He can't possibly be on his game after that long lay-off," reflected the golfer. "If he wins this thing, believe me, it won't be with his game. It'll be with his heart."

Nearly 60 years on and the same thing can surely be said about Tiger in Tucson.

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