For Tiger Woods, Chambers Bay presents a ‘brutal,’ ‘frustrating,’ ‘uphill’ challenge

Tiger Woods, in the estimation of one of his former coaches, fails to prepare enough for major championships. Maybe Hank Haney has a different view of his ex-pupil’s study habits after Woods took the advice of USGA executive director Mike Davis and began cramming for golf’s toughest test two weeks ago.

“When Mike says something like that, you got to pay attention to it, because he’s an extremely bright man,” Woods said from the Memorial Tournament about Davis’ warning that anyone hoping to contend at this week’s U.S. Open better have logged some serious mileage on the Tacoma, Wash., links-style course. “We got out there and it was it was like, ‘Oh my God, there are so many different options.’”

Woods, who is hoping to break a seven-year major-less drought, thoroughly researched the “very challenging” peculiarities of the first-time major venue before jetting back across country to Jack Nicklaus’ tournament in Ohio. He put in two days of hard work on the unfamiliar Chambers Bay track ahead of the Memorial Tournament, played nine holes on Sunday, and will get in nine more each day before Thursday’s tee time, according to USA Today’s Steve DiMeglio.

“I don’t take a long time in practice rounds, but we played in 3 1/2 hours, just the front nine, had lunch, kind of sat down there and talked about it, and played another 3 1/2 on the back. So we spent a while,” Woods, whose stroll of the course two weeks ago could have been a promo for a certain new film, said from Muirfield Village before finishing dead last in Jack Nicklaus’ tourney.

“The next day ... was a little bit quicker, because we knew what to do, what to expect, what lines to take,” Woods said about his second turn around the circuit. “We just knew how to play the golf course.”

Maybe yes, maybe no, since the way the USGA arranges the track that will host its first major tilt will determine radically different club selections. And whether Woods actually enjoys the venue will depend on the layout.

“Do I like it?” Woods asked himself rhetorically after a reporter posed the same question to him in Ohio.

“Depends how it’s set up,” Tiger said after a pause. “It could be a golf course [that’s] pretty easy; you just bomb driver down there … and you’re hitting a lot of wedges into the holes and you just tear it apart.”

Alternatively, Woods noted, Davis “could set it up the other way, and then it’s going to be frustrating; you’re hitting driver, 5-wood. A couple of par-4s were 510 yards straight up the hill … he could make it where it’s just brutal or he could make it where it’s pretty easy.”

Sunday’s practice session yielded similar sentiments from the former No. 1 who’s here as the 195th-ranked player in the world and playing like it. Woods enters the week in the wake of his worst-ever 18-hole score (an 85 on Saturday at the Memorial), his highest 72-hole score (14-over 302) and battling a two-way miss off the tee.

Small wonder, then, that Chambers Bay -- with its many elevation changes and huge, quick, rolling greens that Bubba Watson has figured out -- presents a tremendous challenge to Woods.

“Every hole seems like it is uphill,” Woods said after nine holes on Sunday that required starkly different club choices from his first journey around the course two weeks ago. “Feels like we played 18 today.”

Woods observed that on his first trip to the course, in the rain, he used driver, 3-wood and wedge to get to the green on the 600-yard, par-5 eighth hole. On Sunday, under sunny skies, he went with driver and 4-iron. Similarly, on the par-3 ninth -- which has two tees, one from a 100-foot drop to the green and the other 20 feet below the putting surface -- Woods hit 5-iron on Sunday instead of 5-wood two weeks ago.

Woods offered his recent assessments with a smile, DiMeglio noted, but was he joking or anxious about what fresh hell awaits him come Thursday?

One thing seems almost certain. We’re unlikely to hear Tiger’s traditional complaint about the greens being sluggish.