Tiger Woods took a long road to what is likely his final comeback

For the first time in more than a year, there will be a sanctioned PGA Tour event that features Tiger Woods. His last start coming at the Wyndham Championship in August 2015, the Big Cat endured the longest layoff of his PGA Tour career and you could argue he hasn’t been a factor in golf since late 2013.

The 2013 Bridgestone Invitational was the last win for Tiger. It was an impressive cruise for Woods that featured a dominating 61 in the second round, a day that had us frenzied at the possibilities of Tiger joining that exclusive 59 club.. All seemed to be on track for Tiger — the majors still eluded him but he was No. 1 in the world and it was his fifth win in another Player of the Year season.

But here we sit, more than 3 years later and Tiger has yet to add another W to his resume. Winning seems so far off -- competing, playing four healthy rounds is now suddenly the goal.

Tiger’s career has had some of these roller coaster dips but not like this. Since 2013, the coaster has been out of juice and has been stranded at the bottom. We saw various attempts at comebacks halted by more injuries and shockingly awful play. If his back was not disintegrating, his mind was -- the best in the world suddenly incapable of performing the basic task of chipping a golf ball. The yips and overworked body were two fronts, mental and physical, closing in on Tiger and threatening to end it all so quickly by age 40.

Now he starts what he called “Phase 2” of his life after an interminable absence from the game. We don’t know what to expect after several years of starts and stops, rumors and innuendo, and arguably the greatest of all time at his most vulnerable and precarious point of his career. Let’s review all that’s gone down to get us to this most anticipated return.

Tiger always measured success in majors, but this was absolutely a strong year for Woods. He regained the No. 1 ranking in the world and won five times. A few minor injuries, most notably elbow trouble in the middle of the summer, set him back at times, but at the Bridgestone, it looked like he had it all figured out as he won by seven shots against a world class WGC field. It seemed impossible that Tiger would be winless for the next three plus years. The first signs of this major back trouble did show up at the Barclays, when Tiger dropped to his knees and hobbled into the finish.

He still played well, however, and said the back issues were just spasms from a soft hotel mattress. There would be more back trouble at the Presidents Cup that October but again, we just thought this was some stiffness and minor thing.

Let’s start with the 2014 Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines. Tiger fans will be the first to point out that Torrey Pines is a happy place for Woods. He has a record eight wins on the track, including his epic 2008 U.S. Open title on one leg. Tiger started the tournament with a 72 and 71 in the first two rounds to secure a spot for the weekend. It wasn’t anything spectacular, but certainly he could make up ground over the weekend. At least that’s what we thought.

Woods was a disaster in the third round. Back to back double bogeys sent Tiger spiraling out of control. Five more consecutive bogeys sent Woods packing after he missed a secondary cut for the first time in his career. Woods looked uncomfortable and then eventually mentally checked out.

Tiger’s back problems got so bad a month later and caused him to withdraw during the 2014 Honda Classic. A week later, Tiger struggled to finish the WGC-Cadillac Championship with more back trouble on Sunday at Doral.

Tiger would go on to skip the Arnold Palmer Invitational and then announced that he wouldn’t play the Masters for the first time since 1994. The reason? Woods underwent a microdiscectomy to repair his injured back. Skipping the Masters was the kind of incomprehensible measure that emphasized just how dire the back trouble had become for Woods.

When he returned at the Quicken Loans National in late July, he was terrible and missed the cut. Tiger would later say he came back from surgery too soon, trying to play his own event that benefits his foundation. As Woods continued to battle pain, he finished 69th at the Open, withdrew from the Bridgestone and missed the cut at the PGA Championship. To make matters worse, he split with his swing coach Sean Foley.

Woods played all four rounds of a PGA Tournament just twice on the year. His back was a mess early, gave him some more trouble late, and his game was nonexistent.

We were well-aware of Tiger’s back problems, but at this event something new popped up: the yips. Woods chunked several chip shots along the way to finish in last place and a full 26 shots behind winner Jordan Spieth. It was a bizarre, embarrassing, and uncomfortable to watch and I still don’t think anyone can explain it.

As the calendar turned to 2015, there was now not only concern for Tiger’s physical well-being, but also his mental well-being on the course. A surreal statement for one of the most mentally tough and psychotically competitive players ever.

Tiger added the Waste Management Phoenix Open to his schedule, possibly to get more “reps,” but his unfathomable short game woes continued. He was so bad that he was heckled and booed at times by the rowdy crowd. To make matters worse, just about every other part of his game was awful too. He eventually missed the cut.

It became clear the yips had set in and Tiger might now be facing a career-ending “illness.” The yips are something you never fully recover from and can wreck your career in a matter of months. Tiger looked like a 25-handicapper at some local muni duffing and skulling chip after chip. It’s a basic move but Tiger got to the point where he was putting from way off the green, completely frozen and psyched out and just trying to baby the ball onto the green.

His next start at the Farmers Insurance Open (again, his happy place) never really got going and he was forced to withdraw with yet another back injury. Although he stressed that it wasn’t related to his previous injury (this is where he dropped the infamous “deactivating glutes” line), Woods took some time off to heal and didn’t play again until the Masters.

Fresh on the heels of a “worst-ball” 66 at Medalist, Woods came back at the Masters and actually played well at times. The chips yips were not present. He was somehow in the third-to-last group on Sunday, even though he was well behind eventual champ Jordan Spieth. He shot 73 in the final round and managed to injure his wrist, only to “pop the bone back into place.” What a weird sentence to write.

His summer was his worst, most ignominious as a pro. He missed the cut at both the U.S. Open and the Open Championship, the first time he had ever missed consecutive cuts at majors. He added a missed cut at the PGA Championship to make it three consecutive major MCs.

There were duffs, shanks, curses, sighs, tossed clubs, and always an early exit. But there were no signs of injury.

In a last ditch effort to make the FedExCup playoffs, Woods added the Wyndham Championship to his schedule. He played extremely well before fading on Sunday, finishing tied for 10th. There was some hint of hip soreness, which we’d later find out was a much larger problem and would lead to 2016 being a complete washout. Sunday in Greensboro was the end of the season for Woods and no one was really sure when we would see him again.

A month after that promising week in Greensboro, Tiger announces in September of 2015 that he’s had yet another microdiscectomy back surgery. It’s the exact same procedure that wiped out so much of 2014, only this time we saw no physical sign of back trouble. His game sucked, but he was not out there wincing and falling to the ground grabbing his back.

A little more than a month after that stunning late Friday news dump, Tiger again announced that he’d had a “procedure” to alleviate more soreness in the back. While the details of the “procedure” were kept quiet, it was his second operation of that fall and third in just over a year. His career was now in jeopardy and speculating on a return in 2016 seemed like a non-starter.

Tiger would miss the Masters for the second time in three years and wild speculation began as to when Woods would return. There were February rumors that he could not sit upright in a car and was still struggling to get out of bed. Then there were optimistic reports that he might make it back in May for The Players. Tiger himself fueled speculation of a return by posting a home video of himself “progressing nicely.”

In the spring, there was social media video of Tiger actually swinging clubs at different clinics and during the opening of his first course design. When we actually saw Woods in full public view, however, he dunked three shots in the water at a media event for his Quicken Loans National tournament.

Maybe he was close to coming back sometime last summer and those water balls shocked him back into reclusiveness. We’ll never know, but we never really saw him swing again after that media event in May. There were not even the faintest rumors or speculation about getting back for the last three majors.

As the summer came to a close, Tiger announced that he would return in mid-October at the Safeway Open in Napa. The comeback date was set. Tiger kept his name in the field past the deadline which meant he’d be there. Then on Monday of the tournament week, he pulled out with the ominous reason that his game was “vulnerable.” The health was fine, but had the yips come back?

So now we’ve gone 467 days between competitive rounds, the longest of his career. If there is a silver lining here, it’s that Woods realizes this is probably his last shot.

It seemed crazy to think even a few years ago that Tiger could be done with the game in his early 40s. But as he gets ready to tee it up this week, it’s likely this is his last chance at a comeback. His game fell off so fast and the health issues became so serious that what seemed like another decade or 15 years of golf could easily be whitewashed. The next surgery could be his last and this is probably his last prolonged stretch of rehabbing anything in hopes of a comeback.

It’s not all doom and gloom, however. It appears that Tiger is fully healthy. And if he has listened to his doctors this time instead of quickly coming back in hopes of reclaiming past glory, he can be competitive again.

It must be encouraging to see the resurgence of his contemporaries. The 40-something battle between Phil Mickelson and Henrik Stenson at last summer’s Open Championship comes to mind. Tiger’s position is much more precarious, but watching those two hang with and blow by all the young guns undoubtedly drove him to come back in his best form.

Thursday at noon will give us the first glimpse into what the 40s might hold for Tiger. After the last few years, a completed, healthy four rounds should be viewed as a win, even if it isn’t reflected on the scoreboard.