Tiger Woods won’t even try to keep up with Jason Day and Dustin Johnson

Tiger Woods has a new driver in his bag and says he’s blasting his TaylorMade 3-wood “the farthest I’ve ever hit a fairway wood.” But the 41-year-old who’s making his return to official competitive golf after 17 months away has no illusions about whether he has the fire power to match his younger, big-bashing opponents off the tee.

“Oh, hell no,” Woods said Wednesday about trying to keep up with Jason Day and Dustin Johnson, his Thursday and Friday playing partners at this week’s Farmers Insurance Open. “I’ll just play my game.”

Good plan, since Tiger claims to be hitting balls longer than ever, but, as he said from Torrey Pines after the pro-am, “it’s all relative.”

World No. 1 Day, for example, averaged drives of more than 304 yards and ranked only 15th on tour in 2016. Third-ranked DJ, for his part, was second in average drives last year, smoking it some 314 yards off the tee.

Woods, on the other hand, was once second in length to John Daly. For 2013, the most recent year for which the 79-time tour winner played enough games to have his stats tallied, he averaged 293 yards and was 49th.

There’s also the matter of the last time Woods started a full-field PGA Tour event, which was at the 2015 Wyndham Championship, where he finished T10. More recently, he came in 15th of 17 at December’s Hero World Challenge exhibition.

With such a small sample size since and a lengthy layoff after multiple back surgeries, even Tiger had no idea what to expect from this week’s contest.

“I haven’t played a full schedule in a very long time so this is an unknown,” Woods, who will start four events in the next five weeks, said after participating in the pro-am on Torrey Pines’ North Course.

“One of the reasons why I’m playing four out of five is to get in the playing rhythm of playing competitive golf again,” he said. “I’ve been away from it for so long … It’s been a while.”

It’s also been a while since Woods strolled the fairways at Torrey — where he has won eight times as a professional, most recently in 2013 — and this is the first time he’ll play a revamped North Course. Despite getting to know essentially a new track, Woods pronounced himself “comfortable” with his surroundings.

It remains to be seen whether he’ll be relaxed enough to exercise patience in a contest that will feature colder temperatures than he’s accustomed to in Florida, plus the thick and juicy rough, fairways saturated by recent rains, and a date with the high-flying DJ-Day duo. The goal, he said, is to work himself slowly back into the tempo of tour golf.

“I’m trying to remind myself, hey, I haven’t played in a while. Hey, it’s just the first two days, get yourself in contention, build your way up, it’s not Sunday,” Woods said about teeing off with Day and Johnson. “I got a long way to go to get to that point and build myself into a position where I have a chance to win this event.”

And while Tiger recognized he’ll likely be the first of the trio to hit the second shot, he proclaimed himself “excited” to be back in the thick of things in the marquee threesome.

“Two guys that are the best in the world [who are] playing some unbelievable golf and they’re good friends of mine,” said Woods. “So I couldn’t ask for a better pairing.”

CBS analyst Jim Nantz worried that players like Day and Johnson, who grew up watching Woods dominate the game, could make it difficult for Tiger to work his way back into contention.

“[Tiger] was able to bring to the game a fearlessness that we are seeing in today’s top players. And it is that fearlessness that they have that is going to make his path to get back to where he wants to be all that much more difficult,” Nantz said during a Wednesday teleconference. “This generation, they are not intimidated by anyone and he made them that way.”

Phil Mickelson did not necessarily agree that Woods faced a more challenging route back to the winner’s circle.

“I think it’s much easier to do it again, or to play at that level again, than it is to do it for the first time,” Mickelson said on a Golf.com podcast. “So when he does come back, I think he’ll be able to find a way to win and to be successful even if he’s physically not able to swing the club like he used to.

“He’ll find a way to hit the shots he needs to hit,” said Lefty, “and shoot the lowest score.”

Tiger concurred.

“I can’t carry the ball 320 yards out here in this stuff. Those guys will be bombing it out there and that’s fine,” said Woods. “The name of the game is lowest score; it’s not a long-drive contest.”