Tiger Woods’ start to the year was a train wreck

It was uncomfortable watching the start of Tiger Woods’ first round of the year on Thursday. The chipping yips have wedged right in between the 14-time major winner’s ears. We saw much of the same ugliness that we got last month at the Hero World Challenge, when Tiger returned from almost a four-month injury layoff and was abominable with his wedges. At that event, he had at least nine horrific chunk shots that you wouldn’t expect from some high-chopping handicapper over the course of four days.

On Thursday at the Phoenix Open, Woods was put in the unfortunate position of having to make several short wedge shots in his first four holes. But instead of taking wedge out of the bag, the greatest player of a generation opted to try and run it up on the green with mid-irons. Each time he tried this, it ended poorly. At the first hole, he ran a 7-iron short onto the green and missed his putt to start the year with bogey. At the fourth hole, his run-up finished short, settling just at the top of a hill and on the edge of the green. He three-putted from there for a godawful double bogey and a 4-over through his first four holes.

The one hole he did make a par on was the easy par-5 3rd, and that also featured a horrendous short game shot. This used to be an easy up-and-down for birdie for Tiger, but here it was a sloppy par with a chunked chip that left it in the rough.

Even if Tiger were pulling off these shots and making pars, his club selection is a pretty clear signal that something is going on with the short game. These Tour pros just don’t pull mid-irons and try to pull these low running chip shots like that from the places where his ball was around these greens. Later in his front nine, he took a putter from a position in front of the green where he almost always would have pulled a nice and easy sand wedge. Has he lost all confidence pitching around the green? We’re just four holes into his first round of 2015 but it doesn’t look like that display at the World Challenge was an isolated incident or a byproduct of “rust.”

In the first 10 minutes of the Golf Channel broadcast, four different commentators described Tiger’s start thusly:

One of the redeeming parts of the World Challenge was that his ball-striking looked pretty good and things seemed on the right track with new swing consultant Chris Como. But everything looked awful at the start of his opening round in Phoenix. The year started with a 3-wood off the first tee that was so far right it nearly went out of bounds. At the second, he hit a terrible approach shot well short of the green and some 25 yards short of the cup. And the first time he pulled driver didn’t go well either, as Woods bombed another one right and into a dry hazard that he was able to play out of the desert.

No. 1: 3-wood airmailed off the course right, poor chip shot with 7-iron, bogey

No. 2: Horrendous approach shot from just 126 yards, poor chip 10 feet past, bogey

No. 3: Driver way right into hazard, chunked chip shot, disappointing par

No. 4: Tries low-running chip with mid-iron again, comes up short, three-putts for double bogey

It’s fruitless to try and extrapolate much from this to predict how the rest of the year will go for Tiger. He’s just into the front nine of his first round. But this was stunning. There is no other word for it. All facets of his game looked bad, but the short game issues appear to be a lingering problem and a major threat to his success.