Tiger Woods’ return to golf at Hero World Challenge raises inevitable questions

Tiger Woods will hit his first competitive golf shot in some three months Thursday at his Hero World Challenge and, whether he duck hooks it, shanks it, or rips it down the middle, scrutiny of his swing, game, and everything Eldrick will take on new urgency.

With Woods, who is about to turn 39, on his fourth swing coach since he turned professional, stuck on 14 majors for the past six years, finishing up a calendar year in which he earned nothing but two WDs and three MCs (including a career-first MDF) and another stint on the DL, questions abound as to what’s next for the world’s 24th-ranked player.

For sure, a recap of Woods’ 2014 season yields more questions than answers. Tiger:

The queries, as Woods prepares to take the field at the World Challenge, begin with a big “now what?” and go from there.

Have expectations changed?

No doubt, Woods will chant his mantra that he’s only out there to win when he meets the press this week ahead of his first start in about three months. Realistically, for some Woods watchers, Tiger playing without pain for all 72 holes of the no-cut event at his old stomping grounds of Isleworth -- in the same neighborhood where he sent his life and career careening into a fire hydrant five years ago -- would have to count as a victory of sorts.

Some will look for Woods to find the fairway more than not and drill a bunch of 10-foot putts, while still others would pooh-pooh his being in contention or even winning as not much of an achievement, given the tourney’s limited field. So, no, expectations remain about the same.

What impact will new “consultant” Chris Como have on Tiger’s swing?

Until he burst on the scene as Woods’ new swing “consultant,” Chris Como was a little-known golf instructor working out of Plano, Texas. Now, the 37-year-old biomechanics grad student is in the spotlight and under the microscope, and Brandel Chamblee, for one, believes it’s a partnership that could work. “This is a good path for Tiger Woods,” Chamblee, a constant critic of Tiger’s most recent ex-coach, Sean Foley, said on the John Feinstein Show last week, because Como will take Woods’ swing back to the future.

“What he’s going to find out is the body has to be moving in two different directions in your back swing,” Chamblee explained. “As your upper body is completing the back swing, your lower body needs to be moving toward the target. That’s what Tiger Woods did early in his career. That’s what Tiger Woods did under Butch [Harmon]. That’s what he did under Hank [Haney]. He stopped doing that under Sean Foley – and a big part of his swing problems and his injuries came about because of that.”

On the other hand, Como’s other students -- Aaron Baddeley, Richard Lee, and Jamie Lovemark -- are not exactly world-beaters, which gave Chamblee pause. “Two of his players are close to the worst on the PGA Tour [in greens in regulation],” said Chamblee, noting that Baddeley and Lee ranked 174th and 171st, respectively, in that category for the 2014 season.

Woods went from being “the greatest artist with a golf club that we’ve ever seen” to “a mechanic,” according to Chamblee, who, along with the rest of us, will have to wait and see whether Como can get Tiger to “move his body properly.”

Will Woods ever win another major?

There is still some idle chatter about whether Woods will overtake Jack Nicklaus’ mark of 18 major titles. After skipping last year’s Masters and U.S. Open due to injury, not contending at the British Open, and missing the cut at the PGA, though, precious few are realistically wondering how many majors Tiger will win in a season.

Instead, Woods will enter 2015 with the weight of six years of major-free golf on his shoulders. Everyone with a passing acquaintance with the 14-time major champion knows that the last grand slam event he captured was in 2008 at the U.S. Open. These stats from the Associated Press’ Doug Ferguson only add meat to the bones of how far Woods has fallen off the major grid: five top-five finishes in 16 majors played since 2010 and no sub-70 final-round scores since the 2011 Masters.

Will Tiger win at all in 2015?

Tiger is only one year removed from a five-win, if major-less season, but so much has happened since Zach Johnson dropped the hammer from the drop zone on what appeared to be a lock-cinch Woods win at the 2013 World Challenge. No harm, no foul, it seemed, except that the playoff loss was one of the few highlights of Tiger’s last 12 months. In the worst season of his career, Woods finished only three of the eight events he started, had back surgery from which he came back too soon and which cost him two major starts, and was a complete non-factor inside the ropes. The hooks, shanks, chunks, and cursing were alarming almost each and every time he teed it up. The last time we saw him, at the PGA in early August:

How much longer can Woods compete at an elite level?

Woods has nearly 20 years of professional wear and tear on his nearly 39-year-old body (he’ll be one year closer to the big 4-0 on December 30). He is fond of reminding us that Nicklaus earned his 18th and final major at 46 so he has plenty of time to overtake the historic mark. Nicklaus’ win at age 46, however, was a bit of an outlier, as he had not won a major in the six years prior to that legendary Masters title. Nicklaus even said he “wasn’t really a golfer anymore.” If Tiger’s game rebounds, though, the question remains as to how well his injury-wracked physique will hold up over the next seven years or so.