Tiger Woods’ Hero World Challenge 2014: Tee times, pairings for Thursday’s round

While it may not be an official PGA Tour event, the most interesting golf tournament since the Ryder Cup tees off Thursday morning in Orlando. The Hero World Challenge is one of those silly season events that bridges the dead time from October through January, and the attendees are often messing around with swing tweaks or new equipment. But even if they’re not at their best, this is still the most-loaded field of this stretch of the season, and that’s with only 18 players teeing it up.

Of those 18 players, 10 are from the top 15 in the Official World Golf Rankings. But it’s one of the players outside that set which makes this such an interesting and must-watch golf tournament. Tiger Woods, currently No. 24 in the world, returns to competitive golf for the first time since that sad, ugly missed cut in early August at the PGA Championship. He arrives with a new swing, new swing “consultant,” some new equipment, and a little less weight. As he hits the sunset stretch of his career, there is a long list of questions Woods must answer this season coming off what was one of the worst, most frustrating years of his career.

This won’t be the most intense major-like setting for Woods to test his new swing, but for his first time out playing 18 holes of competitive golf, it’s a good start. His competitors are the best in the world and it’s a great spot for Woods to test out this new motion, and also make sure his back, which hasn’t gone through a round in almost four months, is actually back to full-strength following all that rest and rehab.

This is Woods’ little party, benefitting his foundation, so he has a hand in setting the tee times and often plays with someone with whom he’s comfortable. He’ll go out with Jason Day for the first round Thursday. You may recall that Woods played with Day the last time he came back from a long layoff -- that first, truncated and bumbling return from back surgery at Congressional in late June. Woods and Day got along well enough that round with all eyes on the former, joking and conversing throughout the 18-hole march. They’ll tee it up just after noon Thursday at Isleworth.

The move to Isleworth probably added to the depth of the field, with so many players residing in either that community or the nearby Lake Nona golf community. They’re pretty bland, characterless McMansion golf and real estate properties, but if it adds to accessibility and field depth, then so be it. This will be the only year that Wood’s World Challenge is held here, however, as he’s already announced that the event is moving to another similar high-roller real estate community in the Bahamas for the next three years -- the Albany resort, where a bunch of golfers also have property.

So this will be the one year we get to see Woods return and tee it up at the place where he lived for more than a decade and was the site of that infamous one-car crash into a fire hydrant. It’s an easier course and was always lit up by the world-class players during that grotesque Tavistock Cup, so expect to see lots of birdies. Here’s the tee sheet for Thursday’s first round: