Tiger said if he returned to competition, he’d play a limited number of tour events. Here’s an educated guess at which events they might be

By Dan Rapaport
NEW PROVIDENCE, Bahamas — When Tiger Woods told Golf Digest he’ll never play the PGA Tour full-time “ever again” and that he’ll have to “pick and choose” which events he plays, some pointed out that Woods had already been playing a limited schedule before his February 2021 accident. Yes and no. In 2018—his first year back after his spinal fusion surgery—Woods played 19 events. In hindsight, it was far too many. Woods himself admitted as much, citing fatigue as the reason he played so poorly in that year’s Ryder Cup. Vowing not to make the same mistake again, Woods played 14 events in 2019, which included an extended break after he won the Masters in epic fashion. The 15-time major winner played nine events in 2020, but that number is skewed by the three-month COVID-19 hiatus.

Woods has cruised in the 14-event-a-year range, but given his comments in the last couple days, there’s almost no chance he plays that much going forward. So if those were limited schedules, these will be extremely limited schedules. It’s also worth noting that Woods might not play on the PGA Tour ever again. It’s not likely, but it’s possible.

“I haven’t proven it to myself that I can do it,” Woods said Tuesday. “I can show up here and I can host an event, I can play a par-3 course, I can hit a few shots, I can chip and putt, but we’re talking about going out there and playing against the world’s best on the most difficult golf courses under the most difficult conditions. I’m so far from that. Now, I have a long way to go to get to that point. Now, I haven’t decided whether or not I want to get to that point. I’ve got to get my leg to a point where that decision can be made.”

For the purposes of this piece, we are going to assume that Woods’ leg will, in fact, progress to the point where he can play a select few tournaments. With that in mind, here’s our best educated guess as to how Woods would rank events—from the one he’ll play so long as it’s physically possible, to the ones that have all but certainly hosted Tiger Woods for the last time.

If he plays one more event in his life, it’s this one

THE MASTERS
No event has played a bigger part in Woods’ career arc than the Masters. It’s where he won his first major, blitzing the field by 12 and shattering a color barrier in the process. It’s where he completed his Tiger Slam in 2001, the most dominant stretch of golf in the modern age. And it’s where he won his 15th major in storybook fashion, summiting golf’s Mount Everest after virtually everyone counted him out. Woods has deep reverence for golf’s most famous event, and if he can only play one more event for the rest of his life, it’s this one.

Woods’ victory at Augusta in 1997 began a lifelong connection to the tournament that will probably keep him playing the event until he officially retires.

The next tier

Open Championship
It’s not just that Woods cherishes the sport’s oldest championship; it’s that it fits his current game—at least, what we think his game will look like—perhaps better than any other. Links golf prioritizes guile over girth, precision over power. On a baked-out course that will neutralize length (insofar as that’s even possible), Woods can plot his way around and rely on his strength, his iron play. Woods said Tuesday that he’d love to play in the 150th Open at St. Andrews; that feels a bit far-fetched, but don’t bet against him playing in at least one more Open.

Genesis Invitational
It’s his event. He’s the host, it benefits his foundation and it’s on his home turf of Southern California. Despite his lack of success at Riviera—nowhere has he played more tournaments without a victory—it is the site of his first PGA Tour start, and Woods will do whatever he can to bolster his foundation. His presence as a competitor at this event would certainly do the trick.

Hero World Challenge
See above regarding the foundation work. It’s also a chill week in the Bahamas, with a limited field and a flat, generous golf course.

PGA Championship
Woods has fared quite well on PGA of America setups throughout the years (though that can be said for basically any golf tournament), and Phil Mickelson proved at Kiawah that it’s absolutely possible to, amid a terrible season, peak for one week and poach a major championship out of nowhere. Tiger has always built his schedule around the majors, and with the event now coming in May—when it’s not oppressively hot—he can take a full month off after the Masters to get himself ready again.

TIMOTHY A. CLARY
Four of Tiger’s 15 major titles have come in the PGA Championship.

Memorial Tournament
Only four men have their own tournaments on the PGA Tour: Tiger, Byron Nelson Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus. Woods takes pride in being one of those four, and he feels a kinship with the only man who has more major championships than he. It doesn’t hurt that he’s won the event five times. The Memorial, you may remember, was the first event Woods returned to after the COVID hiatus in 2020. He’ll want to play for Jack.

The Players Champioinship
The Players is popular ridicule fodder for Golf Twitter, but Woods himself holds the event in high regard. “Our championship,” as he calls it. And TPC Sawgrass is another course that rewards precise iron play more so than brute strength. Woods also threw his full support behind the PGA Tour on Tuesday—he’s not open to joining Greg Norman’s venture, it’s safe to say—and this is the tour’s crown jewel. He almost singularly responsible for the large purses the tour hands out today, and the tour is hugely grateful to him for the attention he’s brought to golf. There’s a lot of love there.

HARD MAYBES

U.S. Open
Yes, it’s a major. But you couldn’t possibly cook up a worse fit game-wise for a late-40s man with his injury history. The courses are long. So is the rough. It’s a grueling test, both physically and mentally. And while he has three U.S. Open trophies on his mantle, he’s missed the cut in three of his last four appearances. If there’s one major he’d feel comfortable skipping, it’s this one.

Arnold Palmer Invitational
He’s won the event eight times, and it has the same sentimental value that the Memorial does. The only difference here is this comes directly before the Players, and we can’t see him playing back-to-back weeks again.

David Cannon
Woods has won Arnie’s event eight times in his career.

Farmers Insurance Open
He’s also won this one eight times, and Torrey Pines is the site of perhaps the signature performance of his career. But it comes in January, when it rarely gets to 60 degrees in La Jolla, and Woods has spoken in the past about how important warmth and humidity are for making his body feel better. The course is forever long and plays soft. It’s just not a great fit, but he could well feel that he can win it with his B game.

Tournament organisers who need a miracle

Every other event in existence
Count ‘em. If he plays all the ones listed above, even the hard maybes, that’s 10 events. Hard to think he ever plays more than that. As Woods said: “It’s an unfortunate reality, but it’s my reality. And I accept it.”

The post What Tiger Woods’ future schedule might look like appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By John Feinstein
The media frenzy surrounding Tiger Woods’ terrifying accident on the morning of Feb. 23 wasn’t surprising. Woods is one of a handful of iconic athletes on the planet who have transcended their sport. Think Michael Jordan, LeBron James, Tom Brady, Serena Williams. Soccer fans might insist Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo belong on the list, and tennis fans will want to add Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic. I would say not quite, but that’s not the point here.

Woods’ accident became the news headline around the world that day. And, as soon as it became apparent his injuries weren’t life-threatening, the speculation began. If I had a dollar for every time I was asked in the last week if I thought Woods would play competitive golf again, I wouldn’t be writing this column. I’d be retired on the money I’d made.

Here’s the answer to the question: Not only do I not know, not only do all the orthopaedic surgeons being quoted based on past experiences with other patients not know, but the doctors who operated on Woods don’t know.

And, as Rory McIlroy, frequently the voice of reason in golf, pointed out on Wednesday: It doesn’t matter. What matters is whether Woods can walk again without a limp and live a normal life. If he can play golf for fun, that’s a bonus. If he can come back to play competitively, that’s a mega-bonus.

Of course, a natural follow-up question surfaced: What happens to the overall health of golf if Woods doesn’t return? And here a contingent of observers voicing fears that the sport is about to face ruin, also not surprisingly, got a little bit over the top with their concerns.

Arnold Palmer, the most important player in the history of golf, retired and the game went on. Jack Nicklaus, arguably the greatest player in the history of golf, retired and the game went on. Woods, arguably the most iconic glass-ceiling breaker in the history of golf, didn’t play or was a non-factor in golf for several years, and the game went on.

Woods will retire someday. It might be now because of the accident, or it might be in 15 years after he adds a dozen senior titles to the 15 majors he’s already won. Either way, the game will miss him. Either way, his legacy is absolutely secure. Which is why I don’t understand why people are wailing about how difficult it will be for “golf to go on.”

Montana Pritchard/PGA of America
Golf has seen legends Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer age on to the senior tour and eventual retire and yet the sport moved forward and continued to thrive and grow.

There were actually stories this past week that wondered how players would be able to tee it up on Thursday for the WGC-Workday Championship at The Concession. Seriously? Let’s make this clear: Frightening as it was, Woods did not die. In fact, according to the police, although he was very lucky, his life was never in any real danger.

What’s more, athletes often compete in the wake of sad events. Why? Because it’s what they do. In many cases, competing is actually cathartic for them. Brett Favre threw for 399 yards and four touchdowns to lead the Green Bay Packers to a 41-7 win over the Oakland Raiders the day after his father died in 2003. NBA players all went back to work in the wake of Kobe Bryant’s death in January 2020. One game was postponed—the Lakers next game. Everyone else played.

There are plenty of other examples. Players play. It’s what they do.

There is no question that Woods has fascinated people—for reasons both good and bad—in ways that no other golfer fascinates. On the golf course, there was a time when he could do no wrong. And then there was a time, when his back injuries surfaced, where he could do no right. Remember the day his glutes didn’t fire? The time when he had as many mid-round walk-offs as wins?

Were ratings affected by his absence from leader boards? Sure. But McIlroy won four majors during that stretch and Brooks Koepka won four more. Jordan Spieth won three before his 24th birthday and was, in his own way, almost as popular as Woods. When Spieth came out of his deep slump a few weeks ago to finish T-4 in Phoenix and third at Pebble Beach, the TV networks seemed pained to even mention the players who won those tournaments (Koepka and Daniel Berger).

A handful of players inspire that kind of reaction. In 1975, Gary Groh won the Hawaiian Open, his only PGA Tour victory. Arnold Palmer finished third after being tied for the lead after 54 holes. Bob Green, the long-time golf writer for the Associated Press, wrote this as his lead: “Arnie lost again.”

Several years later, I asked Groh about that lead. He shrugged. “I won $44,000 that day,” he said. “It probably wouldn’t have been half that if not for Arnie.”

A similar case can be made for Woods, which is one reason today’s players have so much respect for him.

Ryan Young
No matter whether Tiger has hit his last shot on the PGA Tour not, his legacy is complete and his place in the game secure.

Tiger’s comeback, winning the 2018 Tour Championship and then his Disney-movie win at the Masters in 2019, was the stuff that legends are made of—except for the fact that Woods was already a legend. No doubt though it added to the notion that there was nothing Tiger Woods couldn’t do.

Which is why anyone who writes Woods off completely at this moment is making a mistake. In 2018, Washington quarterback Alex Smith suffered one of the most gruesome injuries ever seen on a football field. He ended up needing 17 surgeries on his right leg and, after several infections set in, he almost lost the leg. Somehow, he came back to play in the NFL this past season. Talk about a Disney movie. If Smith can come back to play football, it’s certainly not impossible for Woods to come back to play golf. On Smith’s first snap, he was sacked by the Los Angeles Rams’ Aaron Donald, who weighs 300 pounds and is generally considered the NFL’s fiercest defender. Woods won’t have to worry about that if he someday makes it back to the first tee.

At the moment though, there is no way to know what Woods will be able to do and not able to do as he recovers from his injuries. More important, it doesn’t really matter. If he never plays again but can walk normally, he’ll be just fine.

So will golf.

When Woods retires, he will be missed greatly—just as Palmer and Nicklaus were missed. Just as Michael Jordan is missed. Just as LeBron James and Serena Williams will someday be missed.

But golf will go on—and, if Woods never takes another swing in competition, his legacy will live on for as long as the game is played.

The post Golf will be fine, with or without Tiger Woods hitting another shot appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

Simply put, there are some courses that Woods just seems to love: Firestone, where he won eight WGC events, Torrey Pines (seven Farmers and a U.S. Open), Bay Hill (eight Arnold Palmer Invitationals), Muirfield Village (five-time Memorial winner), Doral (four WGC titles) and, of course, Augusta National (five Masters).

Unlike any of the aforementioned courses, TPC Harding Park was never an annual host of a PGA Tour event during Woods’ career. Only twice has Tiger played the San Francisco public course in competition: the 2005 WGC-American Express Championship and the 2009 Presidents Cup. (He missed the 2015 WGC-Match Play at Harding Park due to injury). His results in those two competitions, however, suggest an inchoate love affair.

Woods won the Amex in 2005, beating John Daly in a clash of high-powered golfers that ended with a thud in a playoff. Four years later at the Presidents Cup, Woods went 5-0-0, his best career showing in any team event, as the Americans made easy work of the Internationals, beating them 19½-14½.

Woods enters this week’s 102nd PGA Championship as something of an enigma. The 44-year-old has played just three PGA Tour events in 2020 and just one since February. He has looked good at times and shaky at others. And the back, of course, will always be a concern moving forward. But Woods’ fond memories at Harding Park should serve as a confidence booster heading into golf’s first major championship in nearly 13 months. And past experience might offer a preview of what to expect from Woods in the next few days.

So let’s relive each of those starts and ruminate on what, if anything, they mean going into this week’s PGA Championship.

RELATED: Ranking the field, 1 to 100, at the 2020 PGA Championship

2005 WGC-American Express

This marked the return of the world’s top professionals to a course that had hosted a tour event during the 1950s and 1960s before falling into disrepair. The course had deteriorated so steeply by the 1990s that it was used for parking during the 1998 U.S. Open at nearby Olympic Club. During Woods’ junior golf days in Southern California and his two years going to college at Stanford, about 30 miles southeast of San Francisco, playing Harding Park was an afterthought.

Photo by Steve Grayson

However, a significant increase in funding led to a renovation that was completed in 2003, and the tour came to the Bay Area in October 2005 for the WGC event. Woods was 29, sporting a goatee and squarely in his prime—he’d won the Masters that April for the fourth time in his career, finished second in the U.S. Open at Pinehurst in June, won the Open Championship at St. Andrews in July, finished T-4 at the PGA at Baltusrol and won a WGC in August. As was always the case back in those days, Woods entered the week as a prohibitive favourite.

And what was also often the case in those days, Woods found a way to contend in a big event despite not hitting many fairways along the way. In none of the four rounds did he hit more than six fairways and all told he found the short grass only 22 of 56 times for the week. However, his length advantage-—he finished second on tour that year in driving distance—still allowed him to gain 2.63 shots off the tee for the week.

“Harding Park is not overly long,” Woods says, “but it’s very angley. It’s hard to hit fairways, especially when it’s fast and it’s firm.

“They tend to get the rough up, because of the conditions there, it’s always going to be overcasty, cool and perfect conditions for the rough to get really thick … they can make that golf course brutally hard.”

Despite playing out of that thick rough for much of the week, Woods found his way into contention on the back nine on Sunday. Trailing by three as he made the turn, Woods ran off three straight birdies at Nos. 10, 11 and 12 to tie Daly at the top. Then, just as Woods was making a bogey at the par-4 14th, Daly chipped in for birdie from right of the 13th green to take a two-shot lead down the stretch. Woods, however, would play his final four holes in one under, which was good enough to get into a playoff thanks to a bogey from Daly on 17.

Harding Park’s coming-out party after its restoration became even bigger when the 2005 WGC-AMEX came down to a playoff between Daly and Woods. (Photo by Stan Badz)

Woods and Daly headed back to the 18th tee and walloped majestic, 340-plus-yard drives down the centre, Daly’s scooting about 10 yards farther. Both men then hit their wedge approaches short of the flag, and both made par. They then went to the drivable 16th. True to form, Woods played conservatively with an iron, while Daly ripped driver well right into trees. Both players found the middle of the green with their seconds. Woods played first and just missed his birdie effort, leaving Daly a 20-footer for the victory.

Daly slid his winning effort just left of the hole, leaving a three-footer to keep things going. He then pulled the par putt, the ball catching the left lip but failing to fall. Quickly and shockingly, Woods had won his ninth career WGC title.

“It just felt so bad,” Woods said of the manner of victory. Not the victory itself, of course. “I felt terrible for JD. You don’t want to win tournaments like that.”

Woods’ comments after the win were a madlibs for how he won so many tournaments in his prime: “I didn’t really have my best stuff this week, but I still hung in there with my mind and putted beautifully and hit good shots when I really had to.”

2009 Presidents Cup

Tiger’s second trip to Harding Park came at the tail end of 2009, which had been another impressive season for Woods. Or, as impressive as a season could be without winning a major championship. Woods won six times on tour that season but suffered a shocking upset at the PGA Championship in August, when failed to close out a 54-hole lead in a major for the first time, losing to unheralded Y.E. Yang.

Tiger went 5-0 for Team USA at the 2009 Presidents Cup, making captain Fred Couples proud as he teamed perfectly with Steve Stricker while recording his best performance in a team event in his career. (Photo by David Cannon)

Still, he was the No. 1 player in the world and the leader of the U.S. team captained by Fred Couples. Woods played all four of the two-man sessions alongside Steve Stricker, then the No. 3 player in the world and possibly the best putter on a planet.

“Playing with Stricks there, in the Presidents Cup, we had this deal where we kind of worked out that for the first eight out of nine holes, maybe eight out of 10 holes, he’d be putting … if I hit my irons well.

“That’s one of the things I can do.”

They smashed Geoff Ogilvy and an 18-year-old Ryo Ishikawa, 6 and 4, in Thursday’s foursomes, then beat Ogilvy and reigning Masters champion Angel Cabrera, 5 and 3, in Friday’s four-ball.

RELATED: Majors played at munys are something special long after the last putt drops

During Saturday morning foursomes, Woods and Stricker faced their toughest test in Tim Clark and Mike Weir. The match was all square heading into 18, where Woods produced an all-time Tiger highlight, hitting a perfect 3-iron and club twirling the crap out of it as he strutted toward the green. Weir and Clark made a mess of the hole, and Stricker’s putt was eventually conceded. Their afternoon victory lacked such dramatics, a 4-and-2 triumph over Ishikawa and Yang.

On Sunday, Couples threw Tiger a bone by pairing him against Yang, who had poked a hole in Woods’ previously impenetrable Sunday-at-a-major armour. Woods showed no mercy, winning 6 and 5 and holing the putt that clinched the Cup.

“I had an amazing feel that week for my iron game,” Woods said. “I kept hitting every ball inside 15, 20 feet. Doesn’t matter where [Stricker] put me. I was gonna figure out how to get it inside 15, 20 feet. And he’d bury it. We just had so much fun.”

RELATED: Why the winner of the 2020 PGA won’t deserve this (*) next to his name

What, then should we make of Woods’ rather successful, albeit brief, history at Harding Park? Of course, we can’t extrapolate too much from two golf tournaments, both more than a decade ago, and one a match-play, team competition.

However, the style of play that won him the Amex isn’t likely to get it done if he wants to win his fifth Wanamaker Trophy. Woods will need to find the short grass off the tee at Harding Park more often if he’s going to be a factor. The rough wasn’t quite Palm Springs-easy back in 2005, but it should be much more penal for the PGA. Nor is Woods quite as strong as he used to be, so he can’t control the clubface coming out of the rough as well as he could back in the mid-2000s. Last year at Bethpage Black, his inability to hit fairways wound up in a missed cut. If he struggles similarly this week, it will be a slog.

Still, when there’s as much uncertainty as there is surrounding Woods this week—his lack of play, his back, his putting—any positive vibes are a welcomed plus. Having good memories at a course is always better than having bad memories at a course. If Woods can summon another sparkling performance in the Bay Area, perhaps Bay Hill and Torrey Pines and Firestone will have to make room at the Tiger table for TPC Harding Park

The post PGA Championship 2020: What Tiger’s sneaky good record at TPC Harding Park says about his chances this week appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Daniel Rapaport
DUBLIN, Ohio -— Winning is out of the question for Tiger Woods here at the Memorial. He knows this. Heck, he looked destined for an early flight home after 15 holes on Friday. Two late birdies and a clutch up-and-down par on his last hole of the day salvaged a four-over 76, which turned out to be good enough to make the cut. But only just.

That gave Woods two more rounds to play his way into tournament shape—to find his feels, to get back in the rhythm of competition. Given this is his first start in over five months, making the weekend was vitally important toward that goal. Woods shot a one-under 71 on Saturday in the first of those two comfort-building rounds, making three birdies and two bogeys in a ho-hum early morning stroll alongside buddy Brooks Koepka.

“I felt like I played well today,” Woods said. “Controlled the ball well. I hit one really bad shot there at 3, but other than that, it was a pretty good, solid day.”

Despite that shot on 3—more on that in just a second—the round can’t be considered anything but a success given the sheer fact that Woods moved well and appeared pain-free.

“I was moving better today and felt like I did the first day, and consequently I could make the passes at the golf ball like I did the first day,” he said.

Woods looked in midseason form on Thursday, turning the ball both ways and shooting one-under on a brutal afternoon for scoring. That wasn’t the case on Friday. Woods woke up stiff and had trouble clearing his left side on the downswing, leading to a pesky block-fade that plagued his round all day. Multiple one-hand finishes had Woods fans worrying, but he downplayed any injury concerns in his post-round comments. He is 44 years old and has had umpteen surgeries. Some days are just going to be like that.

Andy Lyons
Brooks Koepka and Tiger Woods chat while walking down 13th hole on Saturday in Memorial.

Woods showed up to Muirfield Village driving range in good spirits on Saturday morning, the first sign that there’s not much to worry about body-wise. The range session was solid, and while the first tee shot of the day was another block into the fairway bunker, he got up-and-down for par and looked fluid doing so.

The lone bogey on the front nine was the result of a cardinal sin—after splitting the fairway on the short par-4 third, he tried to fit a wedge and attack a front pin, but he pushed it into a mound that guards the front of the putting surface. It trickled on down into the drink, and Woods needed a nice up-and-down from the upslope to save par.

The first birdie of the day came at the par-5 fifth, thanks to a controlled wedge that spun back to eight feet. He added another at the following hole after yet another controlled wedge—Woods’ distance control with the scoring clubs has not been an issue this week—but turned in even par after failing to get up-and-down from just short of the ninth green.

“It’s tough,” Woods said of Muirfield Village, where he has won five times. The three-over cut matched the Arnold Palmer Invitational and the Honda Classic for the highest cut number of the PGA Tour season. “It’s fast. The golf course is right where they want it. Now that the wind has picked up just a touch, it’s going to dry it out a little bit more.”

Four stress-free pars followed before Woods hit his best shot of the day, a flighted wedge to a back-left pin on the delicate par-4 14th. He moved to two under for the day with a 17-foot birdie putt at 15, only to give one back at 16 after an indifferent chip left a five-footer, which he pushed.

He missed two good looks at birdie on 17 and 18—that was a bit of a theme all day—but will take a measure of confidence going into Sunday’s final round. It is, above all, another chance to build.

“Getting back into the flow and competing again and playing at this level, I hadn’t done that in a while,” he said. “Playing home and playing out here is so very different, and making sure that I stay sharp and don’t make any silly mistakes and dump the ball in the wrong spots or give myself bad angles, that’s one of the things about playing competitive golf that’s very different from playing at home.”

The post Pain-free Tiger Woods shoots smooth 71 in Memorial’s third round appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Daniel Rapaport
Tiger Woods will play golf for the first time in more than five months this week when he competes in the Memorial Tournament. Not literally, of course—Woods has been practicing at home in South Florida, and we saw him play a fun round in the rain with some famous quarterbacks in May. But anyone who has played a competitive round of golf at any level knows everything is different when you have to fill out a scorecard.

This whole coming-back-from-a-long-break thing is nothing new for Woods, particularly as he’s moved into this later chapter of his career. The most recent example came last October, when he flew to Japan to play in the Zozo Championship after a three-month layoff following the BMW Championship. Few expected much of anything from Woods, who was coming off his fourth surgery on his left knee and a rather disappointing summer of golf that saw play very little, and not well, after that surreal Masters victory.

He opened with a pair of 64s, hardly missed a shot all week and cruised to a record-tying 82nd PGA Tour victory. Like riding a bike.

There are some similarities between this hiatus and that one. Woods struggled the last time he played a tournament, shooting 76-77 over the weekend at Riviera to finish last among players who made the Genesis Invitational cut. Moreover, his health has been something of a question mark. Woods’ decision to skip a number of key events to rest his back, including the Players Championship, caused genuine panic in the more histrionic corners of his fandom.

And, yet, it’s also a little different this time. Everything is a little different these days. Woods’ health is no longer a concern. We know that because we saw Woods play a wonderful 18 holes at The Match: Part II. That was nearly two months ago—one would think he’s only feeling better with the additional rest. And just two weeks ago, Woods looked healthy and was swinging beautifully at a Golf Digest/GOLFTV shoot for the second season of Tiger’s “My Game” video series (this author being onsite and witnessing it in person). Draws, fades, high ones, low ones. They were all present, simply waiting for him to call upon them.

Still, there’s a level of uncertainty as we inch toward Thursday’s first tee shot. At The Match, Woods was quite literally playing with his buddies at his home course, buzzing around in a golf cart and playing a modified alternate-shot format on the back nine. And if we’re being honest, not much can be deduced from how a PGA Tour player looks during a photoshoot. (It’s going to be impressive every single time).

What, then, can fans reasonably expect from Woods this week? If we take him for his word, he’s here to win. He has said time and time again that there’s no use showing up to a tournament if you don’t think you can leave it with the trophy.

Tiger is a five-time champion at Memorial, having won in 1999, 2000, 2001, 2009 and 2012. (Getty Images)

His history at Muirfield Village provides ample evidence to support the notion he can do exactly come Sunday. Woods has posed for the winner’s photo alongside Jack Nicklaus five times, most recently smiling alongside his co-GOAT in 2012. In 17 career starts at MVGC, he has nine top 10s, 13 top 25s and zero missed cuts. It’s not quite Firestone or Bay Hill in the pantheon of courses Woods owns, but it’s in that next tier.

To win a sixth Memorial, Woods will have to beat a field that features each of the top nine players in the World Rankings. Most of the big names are here: Bryson DeChambeau, the biggest of all, who won this tournament two years ago. Rory McIlroy, still looking for his first top-10 finish since the restart. Jon Rahm, who quietly shot 64 on Sunday at Muirfield Village. Justin Thomas, who will have a chance to reach World No. 1 with a victory after losing on the same course in a playoff at the Workday Charity Open. Dustin Johnson, who won the last tournament he played in. Patrick Cantlay, the defending champion. Collin Morikawa, whose victory on Sunday over Thomas saw him leap-frog Woods by one spot (13 vs. 14) in the rankings.

Woods, of course, relishes the opportunity to beat the generation he inspired. Should he do it again this week, he’d officially set a record for all them to chase, as quixotic as that chase might be. Eighty-three.

The post Tiger Woods is playing his first PGA Tour event in five months at Memorial. So what can we expect from his game? appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Ryan Herrington
Picking your favourite Tiger Woods’ stat is a little like choosing your favourite ice cream: It’s hard to go wrong with whatever flavour you say you like most. Any number of numbers point to Woods’ dominance during his two-decade-plus PGA Tour career, none as straight forward as 82 overall wins (it might be vanilla, but it still tastes good). However, on a quiet, shelter-in-place Sunday, we might have just uncovered a new flavour stat that you might like.

When the coronavirus put a halt to the 2019-’20 PGA Tour season, Woods found himself ranked No. 1 in an obscure-but-interesting tour statistic: percentage of potential money won. In the three starts Woods has made in the season, he has banked $1.95 million (largely from his Zozo Championship victory). Of those three starts, the combined first-place money totaled $4.779 million. Woods, thus, has earned 40.94 percent of prize money payout he could have possibly won during the season. That is just percentage points ahead of Webb Simpson, who in five starts has claimed 40.64 percent of the potential earnings he could have brought in.

Now banking 40 percent of the money you could possibly have earned in a year sounds pretty impressive, and it is when you look historically at the number of players who can claim to have earned that much in a single season. The PGA Tour, thankfully, has tracked this metric since 1980, and during a search of the tour’s Shotlink database, we discovered that for an entire season, the number of golfers who have finished with a 40 percent or high total on potential money won total just two.

In 1980, Tom Watson played in 22 tournaments, winning seven times. He also had nine other top-10 finishes, so at season’s end, he had earned $530,808 out of a possible $1,273,500—or 41.68 percent of the money he could have earned if he’s won every start.

The other golfer to win at least 40 percent of the money he was playing for in a season? Well, that would, not surprisingly, be Tiger. What might surprise you, though, is how many seasons he accomplished it. Try eight!

Here’s the breakdown of Tiger’s performances:

2008: 78.25 percent, 6 starts, 4 wins, 6 top 10s
2000: 63.0 percent, 20 starts, 9 wins, 17 top 10s
2006: 58.63 percent, 15 starts, 8 wins, 11 top 10s
2007: 54.23 percent, 16 starts, 7 wins, 12 top 10s
1999: 50.54 percent, 21 starts, 8 wins, 16 top 10s
2009: 47.96 percent, 17 starts, 6 wins, 14 top 10s
2005: 46.73 percent, 21 starts, 6 wins, 13 top 10s
2002: 44.11 percent, 18 starts, 5 wins, 13 top 10s

Perhaps you should put an asterisk next to the 78.25 percent that Tiger made during in 2008 since knee surgery after winning the U.S. Open at Torrey Pines in June kept him from playing a full season. But the other seven years show a level of dominance that in the Shotlink era have gone unmatched, relegating Watson’s impressive 1980 season to just the eighth best.

For curiosity sake, we lowered the bar a bit to look at how many golfers had finished a season since 1980 having earned 30 percent of the total amount they were playing for. When you do this, and set the minimum number of starts at 10 in season, eight more golfers were able to claim such an impressive accomplishment, four of them doing it twice.

Vijay Singh: 2004, 38.44 percent; 2003, 30.58 percent
Rory McIlroy: 2012, 37.05; 2014, 33.3
Jordan Spieth: 2015, 34.79
Greg Norman: 1995, 33.99; 1993, 33.02
Ernie Els: 2004, 33.63
Jason Day: 2015, 32.78
Lee Trevino: 1980, 31.75
Nick Price: 1993, 31.47; 1994, 30.03

However, when you reduce the threshold to 30 percent in a season, you also have to add three more seasons to Tiger’s total.

2003: 38.95 percent, 18 starts, 5 wins, 12 top 10s
2013: 38.62 percent, 16 starts, 5 wins, 8 top 10s
2001: 38.57 percent, 19 starts, 5 wins, 9 top 10s

For Tiger’s overall career, including the start of his 2019-’20 season, he has claimed 33.47 percent of the potential money he could have won ($119,870,177 out of $358,059,067).

Of course, none of this data accounts for some of the other greats of the game and their dominant seasons—Jack Nicklaus in 1972, Arnold Palmer in 1960, Ben Hogan in 1953, Byron Nelson, 1945. But in the last 40 years, when you compile a list of seasons in which a golfer earned the largest percentage of money in which they had competed for, Tiger Woods accounts for 10 of the top 11. There’s nothing vanilla about that.

The post We uncovered a stat that quantifies Tiger Woods’ career dominance in, well, dominating fashion appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.