Let’s take a quick ride back in the old time machine.
Torrey Pines, June 2008.
Tiger Woods is playing, dragging his left leg around the mean layout and he can’t shake Rocco Mediate.
Unknown to most is that he had a double stress fracture in his left tibia along with a torn ACL. His doctors advised him not to play.
To whence Tiger might possibly have pulled out the old Evel Knieval line: “Don’t you know who the hell I am?”
Tiger dragged that left leg around Torrey Pines and had to go beyond 72 holes thanks to that playoff with Rocco Mediate.
Ninety holes wasn’t enough, Woods needed one extra to work his magic and shake Mediate off his pants-leg.
The Tiger Woods everyone will see this week is healthy again. He got the old When Are You Going To Win Again? monkey off his back last year at the Tour Championship.
Now he’s on familiar turf, the site of seven Tiger wins plus that miraculous U.S. Open — his last major victory.
Torrey Pines South is a brute of a course at 7,643 yards. And there’s rough too. Conditions that made Phil Mickelson beat a path to home. He won’t play despite the fact he lives just 12 miles away and nearly won last Sunday at the Desert Classic. No, Phil’s not there for the first time in a long time. Too bad, he would have had a chance to needle Woods in the player’s locker-room over that $9 million he took off him the day after Thanksgiving in Vegas.
Doesn’t matter. Tiger is Tiger and he’s an attention vacuum. Sucks up everything.
And it’s not like Tiger doesn’t have a lot of competition this week — he does.
World’s No. 1 Justin Rose is there with new clubs and a two-day pairing with Jordan Spieth and Billy Horschel.
Rory McIlroy is there for the first time and will go out with Jason Day and Adam Scott on Thursday and Friday.
Tiger’s got a pretty nice two-day pairing as well — Xander Schauffele and Tony Finau. Great threesome.
John Rahm’s there, paired with Rickie Fowler and Brandt Snedeker the first two days and Rahm will be able to check out the new “surfer dude” Puma shirts that Rickie will wear this week.
No “Surfer Dude” shirts for Woods, just thousands of spectators who will watch with high expectations.
Which leads us to the Tiger Woods Great Expectations stuff.
Ain’t easy being Tiger, especially after that Tour Championship win. Some of the Golf Channel talking heads believe he’ll win multiple times this season.
Heck, good old Vegas Insider has installed Eldrick as the favorite at Augusta National — 9-to-1 — ahead of Jordan Spieth at 10-1, Justin Rose at 11-1, Dustin Johnson and Justin Thomas at 12-1. We love Brooks Koepka at 13–1 — no respect for the guy who won two of the three majors he played in last season.
But we digress. Back to this week and Tiger Woods on Tough Torrey. He passed on Kapalua. Tiger’s pacing himself this year. He had to play in an extraordinary number of events last season to climb the world rankings. He’s now lucky No. 13. Headed for the top 10? Don’t bet against it.
As for this week — it’s all about Tiger, sorry guys, it just is.
He’s the 20,000-pound elephant on the grounds, you can’t miss him, just follow the crowd.
And it will be a big one.
Tiger’s back, so’s the excitement.
Party on!
