Phil Mickelson was right and everyone else was wrong about Tiger Woods

Before the Farmers Insurance Open in February, Phil Mickelson came to the defense of longtime frienemy Tiger Woods when asked about the 14-time major winner’s failing short game. Woods returned to competition after withdrawing from San Diego’s PGA TOUR stop when he fired a 1-over 73 on Thursday in Round 1 of the Masters.

During the eventful opening round, Woods showed incredible focus and touch around the greens while struggling off the tee and with his irons. As wild as Woods was at times, it was his short game that salvaged his round and kept him in the hunt for his 15th major.

Consequently, it was Mickelson, arguably Woods’ biggest rival over the course of his legendary career, who downplayed the perceived severity of Woods’ short game woes (which many called yips) that complemented his lower back injury in February. Here’s Mickelson at Torrey:

I think that Tiger’s going to have the last laugh. I think that his, his short game, historically, is one of the best of all time. I think his golf game is probably the best of all time. I think the short game is, when you haven’t played, it’s the first thing to feel uncomfortable and the quickest thing to get back. I think that he’s -- I don’t think he’s going to have any problems, I really don’t. I think we all, myself included, have had stretches where we feel a little uncomfortable, we don’t hit it solid, and usually it’s just a small tweak. Because it’s such a short swing that it’s not a hard thing to fix. I just don’t see that lasting more than a week or two.

Others, however, were not so quick to express any confidence in Woods’ ability to fix his chipping woes. SB Nation’s own Emily Kay pointed out that the criticism and potential solutions for Tiger’s troubles had reached incredible new heights. Brandel Chamblee, one of Woods’ most outspoken and polarizing critics, made a bold statement about the former world No. 1’s issues.

“Incomprehensible,” he said. “It is incomprehensible to see a golfer who had reached so high to fall so low with his golf game ... You cannot play out here on the PGA Tour, you can’t keep your card with the chipping yips.”

To suggest that Woods had the yips is extreme, but so was the poor quality of play around the greens:

Hank Haney doubled down with Chamblee and said the problems Woods was facing with respect to his greenside game were “long” and “serious:”

Haney is one of the most respected golf instructors in the world, who battled his own driver yips and knows Tiger as well as anyone. He’s beyond qualified to give unique insight as a subject matter expert.

But Mickelson was right, and Woods’ grind-it-out 73 is proof.

The short game is a relatively easy fix. Even if Woods has the yips as Haney claims he has had for many years, Tiger’s been able to play at a high level with them. From Haney himself via Golf Digest:

“He wouldn’t even address (the yips). That’s not any kind of knock on him. It’s what tour players do. You pretend it didn’t happen, or you blame it on the club. It’s a form of protection for your self-confidence.”

Woods has had a fair amount of success with this type of short memory. Perhaps Haney is on to something here when he speaks about confidence. If he is, the solution isn’t magical, nor is it overly complicated. As Mickelson said, it’s a small swing with very little speed. For that reason, it’s always fixable with more practice reps and some success in competition.

Tiger’s spent the past month-and-a-half working on the former, and Thursday’s round could be the beginning of the latter.

The real concern about Woods’ 73 should be his erratic long game. That’s what can net him an early ticket out of town if he doesn’t turn it around Friday. Even the best short game in history can’t vault a player to the top of a major championship leaderboard through four rounds if he can’t find the fairway and can’t put his approach shots in the right zip code of his target.

★★★

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