There’s nothing left to write about Tiger Woods

My first car out of high school was a Toyota RAV4, which is a fine enough vehicle to do certain activities like make general ingress and egress, tote around groceries, or a litany of things not high on the list of daily requisites for a 16-year-old male.

It was a good, if unremarkable, vehicle for the core purposes for which one exists. It was notably less good, say, when driven 120 miles per hour late at night down rural stretches of Indiana 446. The tinny sheet metal rattling back and forth, steering goes a bit, and you’re doing things not meant to be done with an inline-4. Please do not ask why I know these things. Those areas of rural Indiana are governed only by a loose militia of sovereign citizens, and I needn’t answer your questions.

CAR TALK aside, you now know this: Tiger Woods, just weeks removed from stating his career might be over and only recently cleared by doctors to hit full shots, is going to play professional golf again. Or, perhaps not professional golf — Woods’ own 18-man Hero World Challenge is more Bahamian winter vacation than tour stop — but it’s at the very least a real, scored golf tournament with prize money.

At some point I have to draw a line back to the RAV4, because that’s what writing requires, but maybe I won’t. Hell, this is what writing about Woods is in 2017. He is old, shitty, broken, and interesting on a personal level. We should limit our expectation for this return. His career could be over at any point, and he’s facing those realities.

In this wild, nearly 10-year timeline of infidelities and injuries, and return to greatness, and then more injuries, and yips, and shanks, and injuries, and firing glutes, and Bad Jeans, and a pivot into the VC life, and injuries, and surgeries, and OWIs — we have said every possible thing that can be said about Woods’ redemption or return story. The character development is complete and has been for several seasons. We are living in a vacuum, where the time-space continuum is completely broken, and Woods blading a chip and bowling over with back spasms plays on an infinite loop.

Please get me out of here.

This is what Golf Purgatory looks like, where Woods has largely been — save a player-of-the-year season in 2013 — for the better part of 10 years. When Cat tees it up in Albany, we’re finally set to get our resolution to maybe the most compelling story in sport for the last decade.

A positive reading of such a resolution gives us another six, eight — maybe even 10 years of Woods competing at the top of the game. It gives us PGA Tour wins, at places like Bay Hill, and Firestone, and Torrey Pines — where he’s been so dominant over the course of his career. It gives us a return to Ryder Cup teams, as a player, not as a captain. It gives us another few thrilling Masters Sundays, or more walks over the Swilcan Bridge, or more exhilarating fist pumps in front of a raucous Bethpage crowd.

Then, you know, there’s the other side of things.

Woods is a 41-year-old professional golfer in a game that’s getting, younger, longer, and more athletic by the day. He’s currently the world’s 1,180th ranked player, just behind well-known names such as [puts on glasses] uh, Sami Valimaki, Ulrich Van Den Berg, and Udorn Duangdecha.

Last we saw Woods, he wasn’t able to make it through two consecutive rounds of golf in Dubai in February. He last made a real PGA Tour cut in Greensboro in 2015, a few months prior he was skulling wedge shots back-and-forth across desert greens in Scottsdale to the tune of scores in the 80s. None of these are traits or signs predictive of someone who could win on the PGA Tour, in 2017.

None of these traits would be signs that said someone could Monday qualify for a Web.com Tour event in 2017, even if fully healthy. Woods has yet to show he’s able to go a few events in a row without back spasms. If this comeback attempt goes down to injury or wildly poor play, this is probably it.

And that, yeah, that’s that RAV4 you were waiting on. Once the thoroughbred himself, the tables are flipped. Woods won’t be able to win as he once did, able to overpower courses and the field to historic dominance for the first decade of his career. Four back surgeries and fusions don’t let you do that. Tiger is now the economy inline-4 trying to run with a garage full of V-8s, which might not be a problem in the Bahamas, but you can bet there’s gonna be some rattle in the engine when we get out on the real highways.

But this is Tiger and if Tiger wants to play again, he’s damn well earned it. This is a guy who’s added more money to the pockets of his peers than probably every other player to walk golf courses in the last 20 years combined, completely revolutionizing the sport. He’s inspired the generation that may be standing in his way of ever winning again — the Spieths, the McIlroys, the Thomases, the Rahms that stand to control the game for the next two decades. And largely, we’re still obsessed with him. We’re intrigued, we’re perplexed. His singular, sport-changing dominance, paired with his rapid decline — we’ve never gotten the character resolution for Tiger Woods.

Now, finally, we will.