Tiger Woods begins busy summer at the Memorial

Tiger Woods has long been a practitioner of “less is more” when it comes to his PGA Tour schedule, but the former world No. 1 will embark on a rather busy trip around the world that he’ll kick off this week at Jack Nicklaus’ Memorial Tournament.

After playing in just seven tour contests in 2014 and only four this year, the winner of 14 major titles will tee it up five times between Thursday and the beginning of August. Though August’s PGA Championship is mysteriously missing from his roster of appearances, it’s difficult to imagine Tiger would miss an opportunity to win another grand slam event, so we can assume he’ll play in an even half-dozen tilts before the FedEx Cup playoffs begin.

He has a lot of ground to make up to get into the postseason, but if he can work his way up from No. 198 in the FedExCup standings, four more games plus the Presidents Cup could be on Woods’ 2015 itinerary.

Those extra competitions, though, are no longer a given for Woods, who seemed to put his short-game struggles behind him at the Masters, where he tweaked his wrist and finished T17.

The two-way misses that showed up at Augusta derailed his chances at The Players Championship (T69).

Indeed, what the 172nd-ranked player in golf brings to the Dublin, Ohio, track that has yielded him five wins, including back-to-back-to-back in his 1999-2001 heyday, is anyone’s guess. After missing his first-ever secondary cut last year at Torrey Pines, where he had won eight times, and all that has happened to him health- and game-wise since then, long gone are the days when Woods could just show up on a favorite venue on Thursday and walk away on Sunday with a trophy.

What we do know is that the last time Woods played so many events in such a compressed timeframe was when he started six times in eight weeks at the end of his five-win 2013 season. His last tour W came in that first tourney, the 2013 WGC-Bridgestone Invitational, with his next-best finish a T2 at The Barclays.

If ever there were a layout on which Woods were to let Rory McIlroy (the author of two straight missed cuts), Jordan Spieth (No. 1 at the Masters, MC at The Players, T2/T30 at home in Texas), Rickie Fowler (two snowmen in Round 3 this week in Northern Ireland), and the rest of the next generation know that he’s still a force to be reckoned with, it’s Muirfield Village.

It’s the place where he pulled off that chip shot on No. 16 in 2012, the last time he won the Memorial.

And with golf’s top-ranked player on hiatus for two weeks to lick his wounds and rest up before the next major, a decent showing ahead of the national championship, on a track he formerly dominated, would seem to be critical for Woods.

Here’s what’s on Tiger’s dance card following his date at Jack’s tournament:

U.S. Open (June 18-21) at Chambers Bay, a locale with which most players are unfamiliar and where Woods’ private jet landed Sunday night, no doubt for a practice round or two.

Greenbrier Classic (July 2-5), a surprise stop for Woods, who has played the tourney just once, when he missed the cut in 2012

British Open at St. Andrews (July 16-19) where he collected two of his three Open Championship wins (2000, 2005)

Quicken Loans National Open (July 30-August 2), which Woods hosts and has won two times (2009, 2012)

Bridgestone America’s Cup in Mexico (October 21-25), an international event in which Woods will partner with his 2013 Prez Cup buddy Matt Kuchar and perhaps dust off the duo’s Fresh Prince routine

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