Does Tiger Woods’s Mystique Still Intimidate Young Guys?
Tiger Woods continues his comeback tour this week at the Genesis Open. Does his presence today still get opponents shaken like it did ten years ago?
Back in the day when Tiger Woods was crushing opponents with a cold stare and exceptional play, he was not Mr. Warm and Fuzzy on the golf course. He was all business, a warrior on the fairway. In recent years, however, we have seen a new, “friendly Tiger,” one who embraces the young guys coming up and shows a more genial attitude toward the media than he did in his early years.
In a complete reversal of what anybody would expect Woods to do, he and Justin Thomas shared an airplane ride to Riviera CC for the Genesis Open. That would have been almost unimaginable 10 or 15 years ago. In what world would you have believed, for example, Woods and Phil Mickelson sharing a plane ride to a tournament? Boggles the mind to even consider it.
Woods and Mickelson are so competitive that until lately it’s been hard to imagine them fitting in the same room much less the same airplane at 35,000 feet. Over the years, they have apparently carved out a form of gentlemanly détente, probably in part because of mutual respect and their common commitment to improving U.S. Ryder Cup teams in the future.
Now, with Woods determined to get back to winning, interesting questions linger. In addition to the big one which is can he regain his 2013 form, a second one is what will a Woods resurgence do to his new relationships with the young guys?
Can Tiger catch up with this new generation and win again?
As recently as 2013, Woods won five times and led the money list by more than $2 million. He was the No. 1 ranked player in the world. He was what the young guys wanted to be.
Woods’ best finishes since then were a 10th at the 2015 Wyndham, and a 9th last December at his own event the Hero World Challenge. In the interim, we have seen the emergence of new No. 1s in a revolving door scenario that has included Rory McIlroy, Jordan Spieth, Jason Day and Dustin Johnson. We have seen major championships won by McIlroy, Day, Spieth, Thomas, Johnson, Brooks Keopka and more.
Worse yet, Woods’ world golf ranking has fallen to 550. If Woods has his way, though, he will be able to climb back to the top.
"“I’d eventually like to win tournaments,” he said in a pre-tournament press conference this week for the Genesis. “I’m making small, little, subtle changes in my posture and my game and my swing because I’m starting to understand my body a little bit more with this back that’s different than it used to be, and those are things that I could never have figured that out on my own not in a tournament setting because in a tournament setting, things are ramped up and I could feel some of the things were off and was able to work on them.”"
To quote Woods in one of his post-injury comebacks, it’s a process.
“This is still all new to me and I just want to be real smart about it,” he added.
In terms of his ability to practice and hit balls since the Farmer’s Insurance Open, he has not had any problems.
“Mainly I just tried to clean up my swing,” he explained. “I felt we could all see how bad I was driving it, so I was able to clean that up a little bit and still keep my putting sharp.”
How bad was it? For the week at the Farmer’s Insurance open, Woods hit just over 30 percent of fairways.
Tiger Woods at Riviera – then and now
This week, once again, we don’t know what to expect until we see it, especially at Riviera CC, which we, mistakenly, like to think has been bad for Woods. When he first turned professional he finished T20, 2, T2, T18, T13. That’s not bad, unless you are Tiger Woods and expect victory.
"“I love the golf course, I love the layout, it fits my eye and I play awful,” he said. “It’s a fader’s golf course for a righty. A lot of the holes, you hit nice soft cuts, and I used to love to hit nice soft cuts, and for some reason I just didn’t play well.”"
In later years, because he wasn’t able to win, he dropped it from his schedule. It just hasn’t been the annuity for him that Torrey Pines has been, a place where Woods has eight victories.
Riviera has also changed considerably since Woods’ debut in the tournament as an amateur, which was in 1992 when Fred Couples won the tournament and Woods missed the cut. A quarter century later, old yardage books are worthless.
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“The yardage book on No. 12, when I used to play, is a 1-iron and a pitching wedge,” Woods recalled. “Now it’s a driver and a 7-iron, 6-iron, somewhere in there.”
The 10th, which today is realistically a driveable par 4, although the green is unholdable, used to play differently, too.
"‘’I couldn’t get there,” Woods explained about his early days. “We couldn’t reach it. We were hitting persimmon. Where were we going to go? So, I remember hitting a 3-iron or sometimes a cut 2-iron to the left and then wedge it on. No one really went for it because, at the time I first played here as a junior, most of the professionals were, first, using persimmon and balata balls. The balls weren’t going very far.”"
In his first practice round this week, Woods hit a 3-wood at the 10th that landed on the green and bounced over it.
Because it’s been a long time since he played this event, there are other changes he noticed.
“The bunkers are deeper. They seem to be bigger. The greens have gotten more pin locations than I remember,” he noted. “I forgot how much tug there is down towards the ocean. A couple putts I hit just in a practice round here, I misread probably about three or four of them.”
The Pacific Ocean is close, as the crow flies, just over 1.1 miles from the 6th hole. Just as the Career Builder tournament greens drop toward the Salton Sea, Riviera greens fall toward the Pacific. It’s a pretty steep decline from the location of the course to sea level, and it’s easy to forget about the ocean because it’s impossible to see it while playing golf.
Next: Genesis Open Power Rankings
The next challenge as Woods he works his way back up the rankings is riding the line of how much golf is too much.
His goal is not to feel sore after playing. One of the main problems? His feet.
“I’m not used to walking. I’m used to being in a cart playing 36 holes.”