Tiger Woods commits to Farmers Insurance Open and sets his early 2017 schedule

Tiger Woods created some suspense about when and where he’d make his official PGA Tour return, but in the end, it was his usual starting point and maybe the venue he’s owned most over the course of a dominant career.

Tiger announced on Wednesday afternoon that he was indeed in for the Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines, which will run from January 26-29 just outside San Diego (the event’s website quickly plastered Tiger’s image all over with a conspicuous “Buy Tickets” button). Torrey is a course that has been a staple of the Tiger schedule, which has clearly delineated a set of PGA Tour events into the haves and have-nots over the years.

There are Tiger tourneys, and then there’s everything else. Torrey, along with Bay Hill’s Arnold Palmer Invitational, the former WGC stop at Doral, Jack Nicklaus’s Memorial, and the WGC event at Firestone were always big parts of Tiger’s schedule and places where he’s piled up the wins over the years. You could count on him playing those events, and at the start of a season, you always marked them off as some of the biggest tourneys. The year always started, however, on that West Coast swing. He’s won at Torrey eight times as a pro -- seven times in this event, which is now known as the Farmers Insurance Open, and one U.S. Open, his last major win in 2008.

Even with all that history, it was not a given that Tiger would return to the place he’s traditionally started his stateside season. This is a Tiger we haven’t seen in an official PGA Tour competition since August of 2015. Sure, there was that little hit-and-giggle game with 18 players down in the Bahamas in December. But this is a real, actual event and Tiger’s been gone so long we weren’t exactly sure how he’d approach his schedule in what he’s calling “phase two” of his life. The last time we saw him at Torrey Pines, he was chip yipping it around, hobbling off the course, and withdrawing with what he call a failure to “activate my glutes.” The old butt deactivation was a new and legendary Tiger term.

Secondly, Woods had already confirmed he was going to play the Genesis Open, the annual stop at historic Riviera Country Club in Los Angeles. While that is one of the premier early season events and one of the best courses on the entire schedule, Tiger has skipped his hometown event for almost a decade now, and doesn’t have the best history at the Riv. But the event is now run by and benefits his Tiger Woods Foundation, so it was no surprise that he’d make the trip after a long absence. But that Riviera event comes three weeks after the Farmers Insurance, so the commitments were a little out of order and left us in the dark about whether he’d actually play Torrey again. He confirmed for Riviera way back on Dec. 13, and also committed to a media day event there that falls in the middle of Farmers Insurance Open week (during practice rounds).

In addition to Tiger signing up for Torrey, he also committed to the Honda Classic, his present-day hometown event in the Palm Beach area. The Honda is the week right after Riviera, so he’ll play three times in a five-week stretch.

ESPN’s Bob Harig also reported that Tiger’s agent, Mark Steinberg, was “buttoning up the finer points” on a Tiger appearance at an overseas event. He has often played an event or two during the Euro Tour’s Middle East swing in January, and Harig pegged the Omega Dubai Desert Classic as a possible landing spot. That would mean Tiger is jetting from Torrey straight to Dubai and possibly playing four times in five weeks, a very un-Tiger like rate that should have us feeling pretty good about his health at the top of 2017.

UPDATE: Less than 24 hours later, Tiger did indeed confirm for the Dubai Desert Classic. So we will get the Big Cat in competition four out of five weeks here early in the season. Giddyup!