Tiger Woods is hitting awful chip shots and grabbing his back in pain again

Tiger Woods started his day in about the worst place possible -- short sided just off the green and needing to make a delicate chip shot. As we saw through two days in Phoenix last week, and again on the Torrey Pines range on Wednesday, that part of his game is startlingly bad right now. So Tiger picked up right where he left off in Phoenix, bombing the ball about 40 feet past the hole and starting his Farmers Insurance Open with a bogey.

After hitting a pretty simple approach shot about 25 yards off target, Woods faced a comparable situation on his second hole of the day. This time, however, he put it right in the cup like the Tiger of old.

After sinking that chip, Tiger strained to get his ball out of the cup and has had back issues ever since. So on top of all the short game issues, we’re now on WD watch as Tiger grimaces and hobbles after almost every shot (all of which are going way off line right). Even these basic mid-to-high iron shots, like a pitching wedge, are going so far off line to the right.

It’s been tough to watch, but Tiger is clearly suffering from a combination of an already terrible golf game and now a tight back. At one point, he even needed playing partner Billy Horschel to pick up his tee.