Tiger Woods aiming to confound sceptics back at old haunt

The intimidation factor isn’t anything like it once was, but Tiger Woods’s capacity to snarl when rankled, especially when his ability to win or to chase down Jack Nicklaus’ record is questioned, is still striking. Prickly sort of fella when irked.

“I’m still young, not 40 yet . . . . I know some of you guys think I’m buried and done, but I’m still right here in front of you. I love competing, I love playing in these events,” replied Woods to a question on whether he had accepted that the dream of overhauling Nicklaus’s record of 18 career Major titles is over.

Put simply, in his mind, he is not here to simply make up the numbers.

Of course, the capacity to intimidate only truly comes from winning and dominating. It comes from having the letters W-O-O-D-S atop leaderboards, and of players having to stop to gather their thoughts as roars reverberate.

In latter times, those roars, as far as Woods is concerned, have been sporadic.

But this is a favoured old stomping ground of his.

In 2000, he virtually lapped the field as he completed a career Grand Slam, eventually having eight strokes to spare over Ernie Els and Thomas Bjorn; and, in 2005, he won again, closing the deal with five shots to spare over Colin Montgomerie.

That was then, and this is now; Woods, who would retain the Claret Jug with victory at Hoylake in 2006, hasn’t managed to win again. And his last Major title, his 14th, came in the 2008 US Open.

“I feel like my body is finally healed up from the surgery from last year. They say it takes you about four-to-six months to get back, but I have heard a lot of guys on tour who have had surgery, and other athletes, say it takes over a year to get back.

“I think they were probably closer to being right, it being a full year to get back. It would have been one thing to go through the procedure and have the same golf swing, but I’ve changed the golf swing too, so that was kind of a double-dipper there where I had to fight both at the same time.”

From spending a total of 683 weeks through his career ranked at No 1, Woods has now dropped to 241st in the rankings and has gone more than 18 months without a top-10 finish.

Swing changes

Injury and swing changes have contrived to afflict any progress in the past year but there were signs of green shoots in the Greenbrier – his last outing – when he had three rounds in the 60s.

Progress, of a kind, at last.

“Last year coming off surgery on my back and trying to get back and trying to get my feels back, meanwhile trying to make a swing change all at the same time, was difficult.

“I had some pretty apparent flaws in my technique. That’s one of the reasons why I shut down [for six weeks away from tournament play]. I was able to turn things around, had another chance to win the Masters this year. I hit the ball great at Greenbrier. It was the first time I had led proximity to hole with my iron play in I don’t know how many years, that was a very good sign.”

More solid

And, now, some optimism. “I’m hitting the ball much, much more solid. I am controlling my flights . . . . you have to be able to manoeuvre the golf ball because there’s a big different of hitting the ball low with a draw and hitting the ball low with a cut. Sometimes it can be 30 to 50 yards difference in how the ball reacts to the ground, to be able to understand that and control that is very important.”

The next few days will revel just how much control Woods has regained of his ball.