If you know how Tiger Woods likes to operate, you realize it is pretty silly to ask him questions about his playing schedule in advance.
It’s futile as best. Woods will be polite and do the old Tiger Tap Dance.
Well, once again, the question was raised after his not-so-great week of play down there in the Bahamas.
It was an interesting week for the Tiger watchers. This time last year it was all about his surgically repaired back. By last Friday, Woods unveiled his chronically sore ankles.
But after he shot 72-73 over the weekend and finished next-to-last (thank-you Hideki Matsuyama), Woods cranked up the G-7 and told his pilots to plot a course for Australia while he captured a few winks and sent Joey LaCava home in command of The Privacy.
Before he left, of course, the schedule stuff came up. After all, Woods is qualified and invited to the winner’s only party out in Maui next month — the Tournament of Champions. He hasn’t played there since 2005 for one reason or another, mostly because he hasn’t felt good and there weren’t enough wins to get him there.
But now they’re begging for Tiger in Hawaii.
Mum’s the world.
“All I know is I played too much at the end of the year,” said Woods. who was jetting down-under for a Presidents Cup scouting trip at Royal Melbourne. He’s the U.S. Captain and hopes to be a playing captain next year.
“That was just too much for my body to handle, and I was not physically prepared for it,” Woods said of the mad-dash 2018 run. “I hadn’t trained for that, so we’re going to make some adjustments for next year. We’re going to sit back after I’m done with Australia and really get back into the gym and build up my body, get it stronger and get some weight on me and see where I want to start the year and see how many events that I should play.”
Note that Tiger did indeed play too many events in his mad dash to get back inside the top 50 and into that cushy stratosphere of the guaranteed money and no-cut WGC events. He’s feasted on them for a long time.
But the real bugaboo is this compressed new season schedule for the PGA Tour. You have the four majors, the WGC events and two of Tiger’s favorite — Bay Hill and The Memorial.
You have to cut Tiger some slack this time. He’s probably right about not being really sure. He rode himself into the ground. The playoffs and Ryder Cup took their toll. The dude does need to take a close look at 2019.
If he doesn’t tee it up in Hawaii, best guess is he’ll be at Torrey Pines for the Farmers in late January.
Until then, he’s got a birthday coming up at the end of the month.
He turned 43.
Yeah, he better take some time with that schedule stuff.
