Justin Rose will defend his title this week in the Quicken Loans National against a field that also includes Rickie Fowler and Jimmy Walker at a new venue, Robert Trent Jones Golf Club in Gainesville, Va.
However, much of the focus will be on Tiger Woods, and not because he hosts the tournament, which benefits the Tiger Woods Foundation.
Woods has regressed in his attempt to make it back to the top. After making the third swing change of his career, he looked helpless at times as he missed the cut in the U.S. Open at Chambers Bay and the Open Championship at St. Andrews, where he won in 2000 and 2005.
The response was harsh for the man who at worst is the second-best golfer of all time, behind Jack Nicklaus.
Some of the recent headlines:
–The Tiger Woods we knew is never coming back
–Why Tiger Woods is finished
–Tiger Woods is totally, completely, unequivocally and utterly done
–Tiger Woods’ denial over fall from grace makes decline harder to bear
Brandel Chamblee of the Golf Channel, often a critic of Woods, said on the eve of the 144th Open that Woods basically had no chance despite his history at St. Andrews, even though he showed improvement a few weeks earlier in the Greenbrier Classic.
“Watching Tiger Woods go from belief to doubt, watching him build his body up and then watching it break down, and then watching him having to reconcile all of those difficulties, and then try and manufacture a game and to see how much he struggles with that mentally … he is a shell of the man that he was when he came (to St. Andrews) in 2000 and 2005,” Chamblee said.
“All of those obstacles that he was able to avoid here in 2000 and 2005, he’s going to have to deal with in 2015.”
Chamblee was right.
And after Woods posted a score of 76-75–151 to miss the cut by seven strokes, a lot of people piled on in the stories under those headlines.
On the air, it was the same.
“It’s hard to watch the greatest player of this generation be a middle-of-the-pack hack,” said ESPN analyst Paul Azinger, who won the 1993 PGA Championship. “Here’s a stat for you: Tiger Woods is 21 over par for his last 45 holes at major championships.
“You almost want to say: ‘Who are you and what have you done to Tiger Woods?’ Everyone wanted to swing like Tiger. Except Tiger. Nobody needs to tell Tiger what to think, they need to remind him to think.”
For his part, Woods seemed perplexed.
He came into the Open Championship seemingly full of confidence, as always, saying that he believed he was hitting the ball well enough to claim his 15th major title and fourth British crown.
Then he was at a loss, on and off the course.
“Well, I think I only made three birdies in two days,” said Woods, who won five times on the PGA Tour two years ago but has not finished in the top 10 since back surgery early last year. “That’s not very good. The golf course wasn’t playing that hard. I just didn’t get much out of any of the two rounds.
“I hit the ball solid. It’s just that it wasn’t getting through the wind. I don’t know what was causing that, and it’s something that we’re going to have to take a look at, look at my numbers, see if the spin rates are on or not, but it was so frustrating because all my shots that I hit solid and flush into the wind, they just weren’t carrying at all. …
“I felt like I was playing well enough to win this event.”
Forget winning, Woods has to show that he can make the cut on a consistent basis with the new swing he is working on with his latest instructor, Chris Como.
In eight events on the PGA Tour this season, Woods missed the cut three times, in addition to withdrawing from the Farmers Insurance Open because of back spasms.
“Keep going, keep going forward,” Woods said of his game plan. “I (am) … looking forward to playing the Quicken Loans and hopefully win that event so I can get into a place that I know very well.
“I’m just not scoring. Every opportunity I have to make a key putt or hit an iron shot in there stiff with a short iron and get some momentum going, I haven’t done that. I haven’t gotten anything out of my rounds.
“I’ll hit good shots, I’ll string together some good shots and good holes and put myself in position to make a run, and I don’t do it. It’s frustrating.”
There are those who say they watched Woods hit the ball beautifully on the range, but then watched him hit the ball all over the yard once he got to the course.
Some observers believe he has to play more tournaments, test the new swing more often under tournament pressure, but he is running out of chances this season.
Following the Quicken Loans National, the only tournament left on Woods’ schedule for the 2015 regular season is the PGA Championship at Whistling Straits in two weeks.
Woods has not played well enough to qualify for the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational next week at Firestone, where he is an eight-time winner, or the FedEx Cup playoffs.
So if Tiger is going to make a comeback, it might have to wait until 2016, after he turns 40.
–Story courtesy of The Sports Xchange, TSX Golf Editor Tom LaMarre
