Woods answers questions
with memorable Memorial
DUBLIN, Ohio – The two loneliest, most forlorn men on earth were Matt Bettencourt and Mark Wilson. The parade was over and everybody was looking the other way, and they were still marching along. They were at the 18th at Muirfield Village, finishing off the Memorial Tournament, a tournament they were leading from the start Sunday. The TV boys were doing their best to get off the air and clear the way for the CBS Evening News, it being just after 6 p.m., and the folks still grouped around the final hole looked like they were waiting for the traffic to clear. They coulda won. They coulda been contenders. So coulda been a bunch of guys. But once again, Tiger Woods was on his game, and clearly recovered from his knee ligament replacement, and it would seem that everyone else just went fish-tailing down the backstretch.
“Today was obviously a good day for me,” Woods said, getting the obvious out of the way as quickly as he could. A check of the scoreboard showed as much: Starting four shots out of the lead, bogeying one hole, toss in an eagle at the par-5 11th, then finish birdie-birdie while three other groups were still out on the course, looking down his gunbarrel.
Woods’ finished with a 65 and a 12-under 276 total, a deceptive one ahead of Jim Furyk. But Furyk never had a chance. While Woods was methodically chewing his way up the leaderboard, Furyk couldn’t fetch a birdie for six holes from the 12th, and got his 69-277 with a nice birdie at the 18th and locked up second money for him.
So was this finally the Tiger Woods of old? Of the pre-anterior cruciate ligament days? Was this the full return of Woods after eight months of rehabilitation and some four months of play in which, in six starts, he merely won once and finished four times in the top-9?
“It was just a matter of time,” Woods said. “As I said, I was just starting to go practice after my rounds. I was starting to get physically good enough where I could do that.
“My practice sessions started getting longer at home. Hit more balls, play more golf, all these things. People don’t realize, you need to do that. You need to have that ability. You just can’t think about your swing and how to be good the next day. It came together this week.”
That’s a neat blanket statement meaning that his timing was its exquisite self, his power was up, his fine-tuning was in tune. All the intricate elements that golfers put together in a swing.
“Just all week, I’ve been hitting the ball well,” he said. “I really controlled my flight and felt in control with shaping the ball left-to-right, right-to-left. I didn’t really have
a problem hitting it either way. That’s when you know you feel like you’re in control of what you’re doing.”
For example, at the par-5 11th, he missed the green just to the right with his second shot. The ball was nestling down in some deep rough, and he had only a little distance to the green and facing a tough green. This called for delicacy. But he took a big swing.
“I was just trying to add loft,” he said. “Just trying to get the blade working underneath the ball as fast as I possibly could.”
So he took what was surely too big a swing, and the blade slipped under that little ball and lifted it up gently, and darned if the little thing didn’t pop up on the green and go rolling right into the hole for an eagle. That put a smile on his face. Something of a self-conscious smile, for a guy who just got away with one.
Then there was the 18th, a par-4, 444 yards.
“You can get suckered into hitting too much club off that tee,” Woods said. “For me, a 5-wood runs out of room. So I decided to hit a 3-iron and make sure. I knew a 3-iron would get past those trees. Once I hit it down there, past the trees, I hit a 7-iron into the green, to line up the ball on top, anywhere to the right. If it makes it, great. If it doesn’t, I’ve got a 15-, 20-footer.”
As it turned out, he stiffed it and tapped his for a birdie, and that was his winning margin.
So it would seem that Tiger Woods is back. Almost. He’s not allowed to go running or playing tennis or basketball yet.
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