Tiger Woods played his first round of competitive golf in almost a year yesterday, shooting a 3-under 69 in the first round of the Hero World Challenge in the Bahamas, where he last shot a competitive round in the 60s.
Not sure he goes on to win the Masters next spring, off of that. But you know some people will take it that way.
There has always been this impulse to jump the gun on Tiger, particularly after he stopped being Tiger. The reality is, he's a pro golfer in his 40s with chronic back issues. Yet he also remains the game's most marketable commodity, even in absentia.
No one has ever bumped TV numbers the way Tiger did just by showing up and yanking his driver out of the bag, and one suspects that will be true even if he's never again a Sunday threat. That's something no one wants to think about, of course. Tiger's made a lot of other golfers rich these past two decades, a debt today's glut of young megastars readily acknowledges. And so it's entirely natural to want to think of him as back, instead of what he actually is.
Which is, back until the back goes out again.
Make no mistake, it's probably going to. Or something related to it will. And so to think he'll ever be a force again in competitive golf is the most wishful of thinking, because it's far more likely he's going to get hurt again before that ever happens.
In short, he is what he is: A guy with a bad back who's less than a decade from being eligible for the Senior Tour. The glory days are done.
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