Tiger Woods arrives at the Masters and is JAMMING on the driving range

Tiger Woods has arrived at the 2015 Masters. Sure, he dropped into Augusta a couple times last week, but Monday afternoon was the first official practice for Woods and the Golf Channel cameras were there to record almost every chip shot the fourteen-time major winner made.

Woods showed up a little after 3 p.m. ET. That’s a departure from his typical prep routine, which always featured practice rounds at the crack of dawn and an escape from the grounds before much of the world had breakfast. But he opted for the afternoon work in 2013 at Augusta, and he left everyone standing around and waiting all day on Monday.

When he finally showed up, Woods bolted to the state-of-the-art practice facility at Augusta with headphones wrapped around his shoulders. You will occasionally see players warm up while listening to music, but it’s pretty rare and you never see Tiger going for that practice routine. But there Woods was, working on his chipping, and he was jamming for the Golf Channel cameras.

I’m going to assume he was listening to some Widespread Panic jams, but a wide variety of guesses were filed.

The entire scene was a bit surreal as the cameras chronicled his every movement around the practice area. He handed out enthusiastic and prolonged hugs to Darren Clarke and Mark O’Meara. Even Sean Foley came by for a chat.

That was all good, but then Tiger’s new swing coach (or “consultant”), Chris Como, entered the frame while Woods chatted with Como’s recently fired predecessor. That was all a little awkward.

Aside from all the sideshow optics, Woods did manage to hit an array of chip shots without chunking and skulling the hell out of it. The swing on pitch shots didn’t look ideal. But every time you clenched up as he came down, just waiting for the shank, he would end up making fairly solid contact and getting the ball off the ground. So that’s an improvement over what we saw last and a bit encouraging.

Nice.

He’s now likely off to play a practice round -- probably just nine holes with O’Meara.

UPDATE: Standing caveat that this is just a Monday afternoon, but reports of Tiger’s practice round were good. Very good.