Tiger Woods is back. Here’s why you should be hopeful, excited, and anxious about his latest return.

This past Tuesday on the Golf Channel, a willowy Tiger Woods used his nasally voice for a blow-by-blow narration of how he had just dissected Augusta National. There were no empty cliches and he used precise detail, describing various conditions of critical shots. He ran through it almost amused at his ability but unsurprised with the execution.

This was, of course, not live, but a Golf Channel re-run of the 1997 Masters. It came just an hour or so after a swole Woods, bursting through a Nike shirt that used to be a baggy poncho in 1997, went into precise detail about how he spent the last few years using golf clubs as a crutch to get out of bed and stayed in his house because going out to dinner required that he perform the strenuous task of sitting. He ran through it all upbeat about finally being “pain-free” but completely unsure of his current ability and the prospects for executing whatever that ability will allow.

“I’m winging this here because I don’t know what my body can and can’t do yet,” Woods said. “I don’t know where I’m at. What I mean by that is I don’t know how hard I can hit it, what shots can I play.”

The confidence of that 1997 press conference was just the beginning of an era that became almost easy to predict, even as Woods kept taking it to new heights. It was a given that the shots would be executed, expected that the ball roll in, and that the wins would keep piling up.

This week’s press conference comes at the start of yet another reboot of a career that’s devolved precipitously in a parade of injury, personal embarrassments, and mostly bad golf on the infrequent occasions it has been played. It’s the beginning of another comeback and Woods does not know what to expect. And even with a recent pattern of re-injury, no one else does either despite all the pronouncements coming from commentators that range from unhinged enthusiasm to overwhelming dread. No one really knows what to expect, where he’s at, what’s sustainable, and how we even define success with him anymore.

We’re now 20 years into dissecting and overanalyzing every single thing Woods does, every shot, reaction, and word uttered in all settings. These comebacks, each time, ignite a special breed of the mania and overanalysis. What’s real, what’s hype, and what’s vacuous junk at this point?

This is where I’ll freely admit I’m a jumbled mess. I don’t really have an expectation or feel a specific kind of way. It’s just a bunch of different concurrent feelings bouncing and colliding around a lottery ball hopper. Even with Woods injured and so often n/a, I’ve still written thousands of posts and words about him during these start-and-stop years. I’ve written takes, recaps, reflections, and discussed hypotheses and conspiracy theories with friends. I’ve fed the beast and it’s ranged from the bubbly and enthusiastic to sometimes cruel.

I don’t have a grand stand to make with any kind of certitude or a prognostication to fire out there. At this point, with this comeback, I can’t distill down the jumbled mess — maybe that’s why you came here or what you want to read. If you make me take an educated guess, I suppose I’d say we’re being set up for more disappointment. But we’ll have a better idea in four days after he’s played his Hero World Challenge.

So with that, here are 10 feelings I’ve got bouncing around after reading about, reflecting on, and considering yet another Woods comeback.

Let’s get to some good stuff off the top. While so many Woods rounds in recent years have been depressing slogs, these first comeback events are exhilarating. You always hear murmurs and second-hand anecdotes about how great Woods is looking ahead of these comebacks.

This time around, his peers have made a unanimous presentation that the swing speed is back with Woods. That’s not been the case in prior comebacks. He’s moving it with the driver and back to bombing it out there off the tee, we’re told. Rickie Fowler said he was hitting it “way by” him at their club in South Florida. Brad Faxon said Woods hit it past Dustin Johnson, maybe the biggest hitter in the world, half the time during their game last week. DJ then also added that he thought the speed was back in an interview earlier this week.

During a pro-am on Wednesday, Woods poked one some 340 yards, driving the green of a par-4 and making eagle.

I’m always a little juiced up and excited to see Woods in that first event back and that’s amplified a bit this time by the indications that the tee balls are flying in a way they hadn’t returning from prior back surgeries.

It’s exciting that he might be bombing it again but that also generates ...

With that speed comes aggression and Woods’ body hasn’t exactly held up well to the violence of the golf swing. He said on Tuesday he’s just swinging full speed for about a month, so, despite all the intense rehab, there’s not much real sustained golf testing here.

When Woods talks about “winging it” and still trying to figure out what his new body can do, that’s a little unsettling. He said his doctors have told him he’s fully clear to go after it, but “there’s still some apprehension going forward and there’s no doubt this week is a big step for me to be able to play golf and be explosive and hit shots.”

We’ve got a full library of Woods wincing, grabbing his back, and even falling to the ground in pain from these past five years. We’ve been told before that the surgery fixed everything and he didn’t need to worry about re-injuring himself, only to then see a comeback last just a few tournaments. His body is a broken-down mess at this point and given all those winces, there will be some fear there watching every swing this week, year, and perhaps for the rest of his career.

There is a distinction here with this surgery, however, and that provides some ...

As Woods said repeatedly, he is “now fused,” which could be a nice little addition to the Woods vernacular. This surgery was different than his prior microdiscectomies. The announcement that he had fusion surgery back in the spring came with a disclaimer from Woods friends and confidantes that this was just about being able to try and have a normal life again, not to be a pro golfer.

Woods admits this fusion has made his swing more stiff, but is adamant that he’s completely pain-free, which he says wasn’t the case in prior comebacks from the other kind of surgeries. The caveat is that we were told he was pain free and back to normal before those comebacks too. But there’s hope that, just by the nature of this being a completely different surgery, the possibility of immediate re-injury is smaller than in the past. Hope that this time is different and “now I’m fused” is the rallying cry to the start of a glorious run of health.

Even if he’s going full speed and healthy, there’s still going to be ...

Chipping yips may not take a violent a physical toll but can have you mentally in shambles. Now, Woods seems to have eradicated whatever it was that made him incapable of performing the very basic task of chipping a golf ball. It was largely concluded that he had the yips, and pros who have had the chipping yips — the ones who were still able to have a career — say they never really go away and are always in there waiting to resurface.

More than any of Woods’ golf troubles and failures in recent years — the injuries, wildness with a driver, an occasional top or shank — the bout with the chip yips was absolutely the most startling. It was jaw-dropping, incomprehensible, whatever strongest possible term of shock you want to use. He could not play golf.

You tend to put about the chip yips stretch out of your mind because so much of the conversation focuses on his health. But for me, there will still be some anxiety every time he’s got to execute those shots. His short game is probably not going to be very sharp this week. There will be imprecise chips and this Albany course will present a bunch of tight lies around the green. He handled that fine last year and another four-days of yip-free golf will provide some ...

Even if his game is complete trash, there’s an element of relief just to have Woods playing competitively again at all. The fusion surgery announcement came with many calls for Woods to officially retire from competitive golf. I wrote a bit about that nonsense and retirement is often a gray area in golf. You don’t hold a teary press conference to say you’re finished. You slowly phase out, become less competitive, maybe play the senior tour a bit. Telling Woods to retire was always stupid, but the fusion surgery raised the serious possibility that we’d never see him again.

Just over a month ago at the Presidents Cup, Woods, in very specific context, allowed that there “definitely” could be a scenario in which he never played competitive golf again. So it’s a relief that we’ve staved off some definitive ending of his career.

It’s not over but the way he’s working back has given me some feelings of ...

Every name Woods cited as a practice partner in this past month is some young thoroughbred. He said he played with Justin Thomas, Rory McIlroy, Dustin Johnson, Daniel Berger, and Rickie Fowler. He couldn’t have mixed something in with, I don’t know, Steve Stricker and Rocco Mediate? It seems perilous to me that Woods, given his ravaged 41-year-old body, immediately started testing himself against all these big-hitting 20-somethings at the very top of the world rankings. Given how precarious his health has been in recent comebacks, trying to keep up with the most aggressive, athletic, big-hitting 20-something studs in the game just seems inadvisable. Work you’re way back to measuring yourself against them. It feels like a perilous approach that hasn’t gone well in the past comebacks.

The 18-man field this week is also comprised of most of those thoroughbreds, who continue to shower the tournament host with ...

Thank you for coming back Woods, our most benevolent golf sugar daddy.

It’s indisputable that Woods, and Woods alone, has taken the game to heights not previously conceived. Whether it’s TV ratings, ticket sales, exorbitant purses, media coverage, all of it was pushed by Woods. He created the modern PGA Tour environment and while the pro level has a strong young cohort, having Woods back is good for so many parts of the game. It’s obvious, I don’t need to go into detail again lest we make you ...

The Tigermania around each comeback is draining, forces you to roll your eyes repeatedly, and makes you skeptical of just about everything you hear and read. We’ve been down this road before and it’s a road that ended abruptly into a pit of sadness. We got the play-by-play of each practice round shot and heard about how good he looked. We got the reports out of his club at South Florida saying he looked fantastic (the notorious worst ball 66 will go down in infamy). We get these empty words to describe how he looks — one account characterized Woods this week as “relaxed and aggressive” as if that has any real meaning and is useful in understanding what might come next. He or his camp tell us he’s fine, healthy, and good to go only to have him wincing and limping hours later.

It’s a pattern and we are on the exact same route as the previous comebacks, down to the comeback happening at this very same event. It’s kind of startling just how exact the pattern of coverage has been. The burns from the previous hyped comebacks seem completely forgotten.

A Woods return can have that kind of power — with every quote, praise from another pro, and practice shot, we want to be left in ...

I’m in awe at how Woods can sashay right back into competitive golf looking like he won four majors last year and is not the 1,199th ranked player in the world. Granted, he’s got 14 majors and is arguably the greatest of all time. But these last four depressing, embarrassing, frustrating years would seem to take some of the strut out even the most accomplished and self-assured legends. Woods just picks up like nothing happened, twirling about.

We’re going to get fist pumps, and mid-flight shouts of “one yard!” and walking putts in and chasing after shots he thinks are flushed. The score on the card at the time won’t matter and his place on the leaderboard won’t matter, or the fact that he’s not done much competitively in years. We’re going to get that saucy strut like nothing has happened.

I am giddy. I am in awe. I am ready for some ...

This is an obvious one and something even the most ardent Woods hater probably cannot avoid. I’ve been flooded with nostalgia all week, amplified by the 1997 Masters re-run, part of a Golf Channel marathon of all his major wins.

When I had the ‘97 Masters on, my 3-year-old came into the room. Golf is on a lot and he thinks every golfer is either (or at least asks if that’s) Rickie Fowler, Nick Watney (who was paired with Fowler in the one event I took him to), or Woods. He’s never seen Woods play and should have no impression or attachment to him but he’s always asking if that’s him, or if he’s going to see Tiger next, or where is Tiger?

A re-run like this was one of the few occasions where I could actually say, “Yep, that’s him.” So he and his five-year-old brother locked in, watching the ‘97 Masters. They sat entranced for just over five minutes, a long-ass time for them. They’ve clearly got some attraction to watching him more than any other golfer, a toddler’s understanding that this player is different and more exciting.

I want them to be able to see it live. I want to be able to see it live again. Multiple generations should get that reward, including and especially Tiger’s own kids. “I never thought my kids have understood what I’ve been able to do in the game of golf because they always think I’m the YouTube golfer,” he said on Tuesday. “They’ve never seen me in action.”

When Woods was in his prime, I wouldn’t say I was a Tiger hater, but I definitely did not appreciate what he was doing. I was young and dumb and didn’t understand the context of all he was accomplishing. It’s been almost 10 years since his last major win and he’s never going to be the world No. 1 that owned the sport. But many of the best sports moments occur when a legend, presumed to be washed, makes one last run.

Woods staying healthy, finding something, would send the sports world into orbit. If you’re a delusional Tiger-stan or deranged Tiger hater that thinks he should be in prison, you should want one last run, something that’s not this injury and leaderboard irrelevance era. These comeback attempts ignite that nostalgia and perhaps detached-from-reality hope that we might get to see an all-time great do it again.