Woods needs to regain mental edge
— -- SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. -- Tiger Woods needs to forget about Jack Nicklaus, the one mountain above all he still needs to climb. While he is at it, Woods should also forget about Rory McIlroy, the player most likely to deny him major championships in the final hours of his prime.
Tiger Woods has to focus on the only opponent preventing him from putting the ball in the hole -- Tiger Woods. Back in the heart of his prime, when he could eliminate half the field with a stone-cold glare or two, Woods had the same frighteningly strong mental makeup as Nicklaus and Ben Hogan.
Those days are going, going, gone, at least for now. Confidence is no longer the most valuable club in Tiger's bag. He no longer knows he's about to play a great round of golf; these days, he only hopes he's about to play a great round of golf.
So there Woods was in the first round of the Waste Management Phoenix Open -- his first round of 2015 -- hoping he could wake up the echoes and give the sport a reason to believe he is no more washed-up at 39 than, say, Tom Brady is at 37.
He had a heck of a stage for his debut, too, at a tournament expected to draw some 600,000 more fans than the Super Bowl matchup between Brady's New England Patriots and the defending champion Seattle Seahawks around the corner Sunday. Anyone walking onto the grounds of TPC Scottsdale for the first time had to feel like he or she was walking into a weekend round at a major.
Sure, the fact the Super Bowl is in town helped create a big-event buzz. But the fact Woods was in town did far more to lend relevance to a tour stop known for its rowdy mobs (sorry, all you green blazers in Augusta, no patrons here) that treats cautious golfers the way Fenway Park welcomes Alex Rodriguez into the batter's box.
But right out of the gate, Woods started looking like the same Woods who finished in last place at his own Hero World Challenge in December, 26 shots behind winner Jordan Spieth, the same Woods who hasn't won a tournament in 18 months and the same Woods who hasn't won a major since he beat Rocco Mediate on one leg at the U.S. Open more than six endless years ago.
Tiger missed badly to the right on his first tee shot, nearly landing his ball on someone's front porch, and followed a lousy chip with a lousy putt for a lousy bogey. He missed the green and a par putt at No. 2 before some frustrated voice in the crowd shouted, "Where's McIlroy?"
Where was McIlroy? He was still celebrating his 6-under 66 in the first round at Dubai, doing his best young Tiger impression as he prepares for a shot at the career Grand Slam and a third consecutive major title at the Masters.
Woods wasn't about to match his frenemy's 66 Thursday, not even close. He sent his tee shot at No. 3 careening right and back into the desert wasteland. In fact, Woods would end up wide right so often it appeared he was performing some kind of Super Bowl week tribute to Scott Norwood.
A double-bogey at the par-3 fourth landed Woods at 4 over, and it was already clear he had no feel for his chips and putts. He was tentative with everything around the greens, and another bogey on the 11th put him at 5 over and in danger of shooting an ugly score on a course vulnerable enough to surrender a 7-under 64 to Ryan Palmer. "I didn't get into the mental rhythm of the round for a while," Woods conceded.
He did fight back with an eagle on the par-5 13th, and he did fight through the bizarre ritual at the par-3 16th, the craziest hole in golf by two country miles.
Woods backed off from his tee shot once when a fan yelled something about the tooth Tiger said was knocked out accidentally by a cameraman while he was watching his girlfriend, Lindsey Vonn, make history on a faraway ski slope. Woods backed off a second time when the rowdies wouldn't settle, and the fans did something they never do at any other tournament in the world.
They booed. Woods left his birdie putt short, and, yes, they booed him again.
He hung in there enough to post a respectable 2-over 73, and afterward, Woods congratulated himself for giving it the ol' college try on the back nine. "I'm proud of that," he said, "because that takes a lot of mental energy to be able to fight back like that."
"This is my second tournament in six months," Woods reminded reporters, "so I just need tournament rounds like this where I can fight, fight through it, turn it around, grind through it and make adjustments on the fly."
He still has a ton of adjustments to make. Woods was all over the place with his short game, just like he was in December at his own tournament, at which he chunked nine chips. He isn't merely picking a fight with himself around the greens; he's waging a mixed-martial arts war with the dominator he used to be.
"I've been through it before," Woods said of the struggle. "It's not the first time I've gone through this, so it takes time."
But time isn't on his side. Woods is closing hard on his 40th birthday, and as a concession to age, he has slimmed down and melted muscle mass from his torso in an attempt to regain some of his lost athleticism. Woods was a physically broken athlete last summer, when he staggered to the second-round finish line at the PGA Championship and missed the cut. He appears to be healthy now, not to mention a bit more flexible on the tee box. Tiger is longer with the driver in his hands, but the 14-time major champ hell-bent on breaking Nicklaus' record of 18 needs better aim.
"If Tiger learns to straighten his drive out," Gary Player told ESPN.com in 2013, "he will pass Nicklaus. And if he doesn't straighten out his driver, he won't."
Way back when, as a 21-year-old dreamer, Woods blew the roof off this very ballpark with a hole-in-one at the notorious 16th, where witnesses in the surrounding bleachers celebrated by throwing their beer cups onto the hole. Woods recalled that absurd scene the other day and remembered fans skipping the last two holes and heading to the parking lots "because they had seen what they wanted to see."
Back in this tournament for the first time in 14 years, Woods didn't make any such magic Thursday. He proved only two things he didn't want to prove:
1. He's not chasing Nicklaus or battling McIlroy as much as he's fighting himself.
2. Right now he's behind on all the judges' cards.
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