The question was heard often the last two weeks: Where does Tiger Woods go from here?
The answer: to the Greenbrier Classic this week on the Old White TPC Course at the Greenbrier Resort in White Sulphur Springs, W.Va., where in his only appearance, Woods shot 71-69–140 and missed the cut by one stroke in 2012.
When we last saw the erstwhile best player on the planet, he was shooting 80-76–156 to miss the weekend by an incredible 11 strokes in the U.S. Open at Chambers Bay.
It used to be that missed cuts were few and far between for Woods, but that is no longer the case.
His worst performance in a major led to his fifth missed cut in a Grand Slam event and the 13th missed cut of his PGA Tour career. However, four of those came in the past two years.
This from a guy who set the PGA Tour record by going 142 events between the first missed cut of his career at the 1997 Bell Canadian Open and the next one at the 2005 EDS Byron Nelson Championship.
“It’s Tiger; everybody is aware,” said Jordan Spieth, who is in about the same place Woods was at age 21, having won the past two majors.
“Everybody hopes that he’s back and contending soon. … It seems to be getting close, even though the scores may not show (it).”
Oh, and about those scores. Woods has only four career scores of 80 or higher, and three of them came this season.
The first was an 81 in the third round of the 2002 Open Championship at Muirfield when he got caught in an afternoon gale, ending his chances of winning the first three majors that year.
This year, he shot 82 in round two of the Waste Management Phoenix Open to miss the cut. He posted a career-worst 85 in the third round of the Memorial Tournament early this month before his opening-round debacle at Chambers Bay.
“On a golf course like this, you can get exposed,” Woods said on his way out of the U.S. Open.
A lot of courses have been doing that to Woods lately, who only two years ago led the PGA Tour with five of his 79 career victories, including 14 major titles.
However, he does not have a top-10 finish in the last two seasons in an official event.
The question for a long time was whether he would equal or pass Jack Nicklaus’ record of 18 wins in the Grand Slam events, but now people are wondering whether he can even reach Sam Snead’s career total of 82 victories on the PGA Tour.
“I haven’t played enough,” said Woods, who had back surgery on March 31, 2014, and has played on the PGA Tour only 10 times since. “I haven’t had a rhythm to play. I didn’t play much last year, and I haven’t played much this year.”
Listening to the experts on TV, that is one of Tiger’s problems, that he hasn’t played enough.
Of course, opinions are like, um, noses, and everybody has one.
It goes something like this:
Woods should take time off, or he should play more. He should leave swing coach Chris Como, or he should go back to Butch Harmon, or he should figure it out on his own.
He can do it on the driving range, but he can’t take it to the course.
He lost his confidence, he is all washed up.
Apparently, Woods decided to play his way out of it because a while back he announced his summer schedule, a departure for him since for most of his career he often didn’t disclose when he would play until the week before an event.
After the Greenbrier, Woods will take a week off before the Open Championship on the Old Course at St. Andrews, where he won in 2000 and 2005.
Following another week off, he will play in the Quicken Loans National, which benefits the Tiger Woods Foundation, at Robert Trent Jones Golf Club in Gainesville, Va.
Woods probably will get two weeks off ahead of the PGA Championship at Whistling Straits because he is not in the top 60 in the World Golf Rankings, so he will not qualify for the WGC Bridgestone Invitational at Firestone — where he has won eight times.
And he has an awful lot of work to do to qualify for the FedEx Cup playoffs. The top 125 players on the points list are in the field for the opener, the Barclays, and last week Tiger was 200th.
Not to mention he slid to No. 205 in the World Golf Rankings.
“Obviously, I need to get a little better for the British Open, and I’ll keep working at it,” Woods said.
How about a lot better.
–Story courtesy of The Sports Xchange, TSX Golf Editor Tom LaMarre
