PGA Tour Hero Challenge leaderboard http://www.pgatour.com/competition/2017/hero-world-challenge/leaderboard.html
PGA Tour schedule http://www.pgatour.com/tournaments/schedule.html
Alright, alright, this Hero Challenge only has 18 invited players, playing in what was called the silly season. The majors, the Olympics, the Ryder Cup have all been decided, the individual prizes awarded, Christmas is just 23 days away, but all eyes, and not just in the golfing world are on New Providence in the beautiful Bahamas because Tiger Woods, now nearly 41 has returned to competitive golf.
He hadn't competed in 466 days after being laid low with chronic back problems since 2013. That year he was No. 1 in the world, won 5 tournaments before his back problems began to flare up. He struggled on but finally after he played the Wyndham Championship in late August 2015, he had to stop, subsequently going through two back surgeries.
He started brightly, -4 approaching the turn, but a pair of double bogeys over the final three holes led to a 40 on the back nine at Albany Golf Club and a +1 73, nine shots behind J.B. Holmes, who opened with an -8 64 and had a one-shot lead over Hideki Matsuyama, with U.S. Open champion Dustin Johnson at 66.
He hit just 6/13 fairways and 11 of 18 greens. "I haven’t played in a while. Unfortunately, I made some mistakes. I can clean that up. We’ve got three more days. Wind is supposed to pump on the weekend, and I’ll be playing a little bit better"
The winner of 79 PGA Tour events and 14 majors is now ranked 879th, however this little invitational event to raise money for his Tiger Woods Foundation with a purse of $3.5m, paltry by today's standards, has the world's media, including wall to wall coverage on the Golf Channel covering every shot he makes, reporting every comment, analyzing every swing.
For me his return is not as painful as some other greats, like Mohammed Ali who was a flabby shadow of his magnificent glory years when his finances dictated he had to return to fight and lose to the likes of Leon Spinks.
Tiger doesn't need the money, and is fitter than most of the field, and in fact although he is not the Tiger of old, he may still get it all together for a week or more and win again.
However it doesn't really matter, because if he shoots 64 or 84 it still makes the headlines.
Tiger's return is still a big deal for the golf world.
Bryan Angus
No comments:
Post a Comment