Tiger Woods spends a week confirming that he’s ‘not dead’

Tiger Woods, like Mamie Eisenhower in that long-running, depraved yet wickedly funny National Lampoon gag back in the day, is not dead yet.

This is notable because his real-life presence at a U.S. Ryder Cup dinner at Jack Nicklaus’ house Thursday night — following Wednesday’s home video of Woods hitting a 9-iron into a simulator and the CSI:Jupiter treatment accorded it — engendered another round of wisecracks about the state of the health of the former world No. 1.

“I talked to him for just a second. I said, ‘Wow, you’re standing up, you’re not dead,’” 2016 U.S. Ryder Cup hopeful Jimmy Walker told reporters.

Stand-up funnyman Tim Finchem may want to sue Walker for stealing his shtick, since the PGA Tour commish used pretty much the same line on Woods back in December at the Hero World Challenge.

“He seemed fine to me,” Finchem said a day after Woods offered a grim “no timeline for return” assessment of his status that had many writers penning his career obituary. “I kidded with him because based on the media reports I read before I came down here this morning I thought he had actually died. I told him, ‘Tiger, I thought you were supposed to be dead.’”

Now, as then, the report of Woods’ demise was exaggerated — as his tweeted video, with the message “progressing nicely,” stated emphatically. Tiger had been out of the public eye since he hosted the World Challenge in the Bahamas and announced he had undergone two back surgeries in September and October.

Then came last week’s social media rumors that Woods’ rehab had taken a significant hit, which kicked off a string of Eldrick-centered events. Vehement denials from Team Tiger about Woods’ well-being came first, followed by Tiger’s Zelig-like appearances that began when he posed, upright and smiling, for snaps with tour colleagues at his The Woods Jupiter restaurant on Monday night.

Next up was the Wednesday video, and Thursday he was part of a group photo that Ryder Cup skipper Davis Love III posted from the party at Jack’s place.

Even the host of the evening’s festivities weighed in on the status of the nearest challenger of his record 18 majors.

“He looked very good. He looked very healthy. And he really misses playing. So that’s good,” Nicklaus told reporters from PGA National as Adam Scott was wrapping up the Honda Classic title on Sunday.

“He was in great spirits,” noted Nicklaus, who could add nothing to the guessing game about when Woods will get back to the tour. “He says he was feeling good, and he was feeling great, and he was able to stand over a putt and chip now without having any leg pain and so forth. He doesn’t have a timetable for returning or anything else.”

Woods, whom Love still claims can make the team as a player, will serve as vice captain for this year’s biennial event. Ex-coach Hank Haney, however, cautioned fans of Woods, who has not competed since he finished T10 at the Wyndham Championship in August, not to get ahead of themselves.

“That was one 9-iron,” Haney said Thursday on his SiriusXM PGA TOUR Radio show.

Tiger critics will, no doubt, crank up their usual carping about the amount of attention spent on a hobbled 40-year-old has-been who has plummeted to No. 445 in the world and remains sidelined for the foreseeable future after October’s third back procedure in just under two years. We’ll let long-time Woods watcher and newly installed NBC golf analyst David Feherty, who believes Woods will return to competition with a semblance of his winning form, explain.

“Tiger Woods is still perhaps the biggest story in golf,” Feherty said recently. “It’s remarkable how relevant he is given how poorly he’s played over the last two or three years, but he still moves the needle … I look forward to seeing him play well again. He’s the most remarkable athlete I’ve ever seen in 40 years of being a professional golfer. It was like watching a creature from another planet when he came out.”

While it’s unlikely Tiger will be back on tour any time soon, the players who owe their fat paychecks to the 14-time major champion were happy to have him risen from the crypt and part of the team-bonding event at Nicklaus’ abode.

“He said, ‘I know, everyone thinks I’m dead now,’” Walker noted. “I said, ‘I’m glad you’re here,’ and he said, ‘I wouldn’t miss it.’”