Where's Tiger?

You have to appreciate honesty like that. Too many people who claim to be golf fans are the dishonest version of Peter – they think that golf only exists when Tiger Woods is playing – but they won’t admit it.

Peter – give the guy a little time. I’m guessing that you’re a football fan. Look at all the NFL players who have had ACL surgery and try to come back the next season. Almost always they are nowhere near the player they were – it is a two year recovery period. Tiger tore up more than his ACL – plus had to recover from multiple fractures in his leg. Then you have to add in time for swing changes to adjust to the knee. You can’t come back from that in 8 months – or even a year. The golf swing puts tremendous pressure on the left leg and hip areas – especially with Tiger’s old swing. He has beefed up the upper body and is still adjusting, and admitted at The Memorial that he still has to protect the knee.

On top of that is the mental side of the game. You can’t get tournament tough playing once a month, so it will take a little time for Woods to get his mental game back. The heart is still there – but the concentration isn’t, as you can tell by the slow starts to rounds and rough finishes over the last three or four holes of a round.

The fact that he has finished the way he has with the two wins is a testament to just how good he is – but he will not be 100% for a while. Might be a few months, if he gets out and plays more than once a month, or it might be next season – but you can count on him getting back to his old self.

Peter, if I had the answer to that, I’d be a freakin’ millionaire like Bob Bubka should have been after recommending Lucas Glover in the Open.

I think Tiger is still learning to trust his knees, for one. But he also appears to be applying a ton of pressure on himself. If you only play 15 times per year and four of those events are the only ones that matter, then you have 11 warm up events all season. That’s simply not enough on a reconstructed leg.