“It’s literally just taking it day by day, week by week, time by time”.
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A month away from turning 40, the smile did not come as easily for Woods.
At this point, Tiger is now the 400th ranked player in the world, and hasn’t won a major championship since the 2008 U.S. Open at Torrey Pines. “I don’t know, so that’s been hard”, Woods said. So where is the light at the end of the tunnel?
“I have no answer for that, and neither does my surgeon or my physios”, he said. And now he can’t play well, poorly or at all, which has to be especially galling as he watches 20-somethings like Jason Day, Rory McIlroy and Jordan Spieth dominate the way he did not long ago.
Spieth, the defending champion, is one of 18 players in the competition. In the place of the normally confident competitor on Tuesday was an injured athlete in decline ruminating gloomily about the potential end of his remarkable career. “But if that’s all it entails, then I’ve had a pretty good run”.
But now Woods has become nothing more than yesterday’s man, a fallen idol with nothing more to fill his time than playing video games on his console that he actually still stars in.
There’s no word on which games Woods is playing the most.
“We think it changes the culture a little bit, an expectation that you move your schedule around a little bit, ” Finchem said at Albany Golf Club, where the Hero World Challenge begins on Thursday. He didn’t lead anyone on with false hopes of when he’ll come back, which is a depressing thought in itself.
“I would like to be able to get to that first”, he said. “I think he’s still got some really good years left out of him”. The guy who failed to qualify for the FedEx Cup playoffs – again – and went under the knife for a scary sounding back surgery – again – after a massively disappointing season – again. Twelve, 13, 14 big-four titles – it wasn’t that I necessarily wanted the Golden Bear’s mark to fall, but I loved seeing it threatened.
Adam Scott didn’t see the press conference and said he can only hope that Woods recovers. He tried to switch early in the year, then went back to the long putter that he anchors to his chest and putted terribly. Mediate is best known for giving Tiger arguably the toughest battle of his career in a major, forcing him to make an incredible putt on the 72nd hole and then battling him for another 19 holes in a playoff the following day. “I’ve passed Jack [Nicklaus] in the all-time [PGA Tour] win list, just shy of Sam [Snead]”.
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June 2013: An elbow strain that Woods first picked up at the Players Championship ruled him out of the AT&T National, giving him several weeks off to rest between a tied-32nd finish at the US Open and featuring at the Open Championship.
