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ORLANDO – When Bubba Watson was announced at the first tee of pro-am day at the PNC Championship, he stepped up and said, “I know you’re all here to see Matt Kuchar.”
In a 20-person field of major championship winners, Hall of Famers and some of the all-time greats, this day was about Tiger Woods playing in public for the first time since he nearly lost his life in a single-car crash in February. The image of his flipped vehicle was chilling, but here he was, playing in front of cameras with his 12-year-old son Charlie and loyal bagman Joe LaCava by his side.
Laughter ensued and when it died down, Tiger was ready with his riposte: “Are you going to hit a cut…or a cut?” Woods asked.
“I’ll tell you in a second,” Bubba said as he hit one of his patented left-to-right benders.
With the sun bursting bright and not a cloud in the sky above the Ritz-Carlton Golf Club, Tiger soon put tee in ground and began the latest chapter in a career with more comebacks than a professional boxer.
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“I think he’s got alien DNA,” said Notah Begay III, Tiger’s college teammate at Stanford and a member of the Golf Channel/NBC broadcast team. “His ability to repair not just physically, but mentally and emotionally is second to none. I don’t think we’ve ever seen anything like this in sports.”
Tiger was back playing the game he’s made look easy en route to winning 15 major titles and a spot in the World Golf Hall of Fame next March. After all he’s been through, Tiger’s smile as he engaged with his son had to be the highlight of the day.
“It was an awesome day,” Tiger said. “It was just awesome to be back out here playing and being out there with my son, and we just had an absolute blast.”
There was a bit of a hitch in the old war horse’s giddy-up. Somewhere between a limp and a hobble, but Tiger, who turns 46 on Dec. 30, got around well enough with use of a golf cart, bending over with one leg to pick up his tee and fetch his ball from the hole, and even that of his pro-am partners. He said this was only the second or third round of golf he’s been able to play so he lacks the endurance he needs to consider a return to PGA Tour events, and reiterated that he was a long way off from returning to competitive golf. To conserve energy for the next few days, Tiger shut it down early, hitting his last tee shot at 13, second shot at 14, and simply hitting pitches, chips and putts over the final few holes.
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“It’s almost like he’s on a pitch count,” Begay said. “He’s got only so many swings in him each day. He knows that.”
But overall, Tiger’s performance was encouraging. When asked what his swing speed with driver was in a recent interview with Golf Digest, Tiger had cracked that it was less than Charlie’s. It may not be up to his standards, but Tiger still ripped a few drives in the neighborhood of 300 yards. He knows he can still get it around.
“You saw it out there,” Woods said. “I can hit around here, drop a ball here, hit a few wedges, do that. But to go out there and have 220 yards and know that you have to hit a 3- or 4-iron and miss the ball in the correct spot, and then hit certain shots and one stroke determines whether you win or lose, that’s a totally different mindset than what we have out here this week. I’m not there yet.”
Asked if he is amazed that he’s even playing this week, Tiger answered, “Yes and no. If you would have asked me after those three months in the bed, if I would be here, I would have given you a different answer.
“But there are no days off. We worked every day. Even days where I didn’t feel very good, we still worked on something. So every day, there was never a day off the entire, other than those three months in bed, I haven’t taken a day off.”
Watching him drain a 15-foot birdie putt at the first hole felt like old times. He still flighted wedges that made the ball stop on a dime and chipped to inches from about 100 feet on the fifth hole. Fans took turns yelling, “welcome back, Tiger,” “we missed you, Tiger,” “let’s go, Tiger.”
He wasn’t the only one given a warm welcome back.
“It’s good to be outside,” LaCava said, adding, “Hope it’s not just once a year.”
Truer words may have never been spoken.
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