10 reasons why Tiger Woods is ‘back’

You hear it every single time he plays golf but what, exactly, does “Tiger’s back” mean? At this point, it means whatever you want it to mean.

We have 20-plus years of baggage and experience with Tiger Woods, one of the most closely followed, celebrated, critiqued and examined athletes ever. But is Tiger back back, or just back playing golf. All of the above.

Tiger’s back could mean he’s back to hitting golf shots. It could mean he’s back to making corny jokes. It could mean he’s back to looking like he could win again at the highest levels. It could mean he’s back to looking like a different golf creature who could dominate the entire sport. It could also mean he’s back to shanking, duffing, and depressingly slogging his way around the course in the sunset of his career. After 20 years, there are lot of things for him to get back to.

This comeback at the Hero World Challenge felt and looked different. This looked encouraging, and there’s reason for optimism. Whether that means he’s back, who knows?!

“Tiger’s back” might have been a specific ideal targeted to specific goals, oh, I don’t know, six years ago. But the Tiger experience now has been many, many things and there’s no fixed definition.

So here are 10 ways in which Tiger was back this week at the Hero World Challenge (The sidebar provides a more detailed look into the state of his actual golf game.)

You’ve probably heard enough about this by now, but in case you missed it: Tiger is crushing the ball. He’s hitting it out there with some of the biggest drivers in the game, and the numbers seem to back it up. He was nuking it, but the incessant hype about his “ball speed” was overkill and I was getting sick of it. On Sunday I was about to tweet that Trackman numbers don’t win golf tournaments. Then he did this, and I promptly stopped thinking about doing that:

I’ve watched the replay of that moonshot over and over and it’s always breathtaking.

Tiger was hitting the ball well over 300 yards, with regularity. He hit draws. He hit fades. He occasionally hit the straightball. And he was consistent, avoiding the wildness that’s plagued him so much in recent years. This was the best we’ve seen him drive the ball in years.

If this swing and power is the new normal with his “fused back” — a big if — then the driver is a weapon that can carry him to a win. It was that good and exceeded all expectations even after we’d heard he’d been blasting it during friendly games in South Florida recently.

Seeing it was a different matter and he showed it this week, even to the surprise of his own caddie. The power and actual consistency hitting fairways was the kind of driving ability we’ve not seen from Tiger since his absolute peak days at the turn of the century.

It took just four holes and about a half hour to get our first emphatic fist pump. It was intense: the kind he might author for a critical birdie at a major. It came so soon and we were off and running. He was back.

When you move to edge of your seat and maybe feel the urge to cover your eyes, that could also mean Tiger’s back. There was a bit of that anxiety every time his ball ended in a tight lie around these greens at Albany. He stubbed two chips early on Thursday, hit a few shaky ones on Saturday, and was scruffy at several other moments. There were good moments too — he nearly holed a few chips and executed one perfectly from on the green, the tightest of lies.

This remains the biggest unanswered question from this week. His chipping was not sharp, and that doesn’t mean he still has the yippy issue from two years ago. I don’t think it’s definitively still an issue, but maybe his chipping is just bad in less noticeable ways. So instead of an embarrassing chunk, he chips one to 15 feet that should have been inside 10 feet.

This turf at Albany was reportedly extra tight after hurricane season ripped through the area. It’s tight to begin with, and there are all sorts of rough lies that challenge even the best in the world. Charley Hoffman, the 54-hole leader, used fairway woods from off the green to run the ball up to the hole. Hideki Matsuyama flubbed one too.

So Tiger had company. But that anxiety over every chip is back, and it could be a lingering problem into next season. We need to see sustained steady short game play before we completely wipe that frightening chip yip stretch from our memories.

Robert Lusetich, veteran golf writer, tweeted this on Sunday.

Stevie is gone and the world ranking has plummeted, but that doesn’t mean his bag is no longer intimidating or a signal to competitors that he means business. It was back this week:

Many pro golfers curse. Many don’t have cameras and multiple microphones tracking their every shot and movement. So we’re bound to hear just about every Tiger curse, and he’s provided an expansive library of these FCC-agita moments. We got a crisp, clear F-bomb just over an hour into his first round. Fist pumps and F-bombs coming so soon warmed the heart.

A favorite Tiger quirk of Woods watchers is how he never actually calls most players and people around the game by their real names. This is usually the result of Tiger, in his nasally tone, appending a “y” or an “-ie” on the end of a first or last name. It’s the hockey routine of creating a nickname convention that actually lengthens the name with no discernible purpose. There’s the exception where Tiger shortens a name and adds an “s” somewhere in the middle — e.g. Steve Stricker is always “Stricks.”

But this week I thought Tiger painted his Mona Lisa of using this nicknaming device. Steve Sands is a longtime Golf Channel announcer and reporter. It’s a pretty straightforward name — not a lot of room to add on without it becoming really tortured. Undeterred, Tiger went there on TV. Then, reading a transcript later from a larger media scrum, I stumbled on this and just about died:

No clearer sign that Tiger is back.

The white-belt era has been dead. It was never a good idea to begin with, despite its ubiquitous presence. Tiger wore multiple white belts this week. There were multiple blade collars. There were multiple three-toned and weird gradient designs:

Tiger is confined to Nike apparel, but there are options within that universe and he still has some freedom to choose and/or say no. It wasn’t a horrible week fashion-wise, but there were some eye-openers that reminded you of all the years you’ve had together. And then there was that ...

This needs no explanation. No golfer in history has had more instantly recognizable and predictable look. The Sunday red, the black pants and shoes. It was good to have it back, even if he kind of cheated and went with more of a Sunday fuchsia.

Tiger changed golf in so many ways, including the redefinition of a strutting, swaggy flair that was needed for the modern game. He walks in putts. He twirls the club. He stalks approach shots he thinks might be good, chasing them down the fairway while they’re in the air. And when the cameras are rolling, he recoils with a ferocity that he knows will make the announcers and fans salivate.

Tiger did all of this at the Hero World Challenge. It doesn’t matter that he’s not really been a competitive golfer for a few years and he’s ranked outside the top 1,000 in the world. He’s still strutting as if he just won a Grand Slam.

No one impacts the audience like Tiger Woods, even when it’s supposed to be an inconsequential early December, silly season event. Tiger was back and the larger sports world, from Steph Curry to Michael Phelps to Bo Jackson and everyone in between, started tweeting about it. No one has this impact.

A Tiger birdie run whipped everyone into a frenzy again on Friday. That first tee shot, the first fist pump, drew everyone into it at each stop and it was this communal moment. You may hate it or love it, but no one else creates this kind of juice and excitement. It can become a runaway train with delusional expectations and detached from reality.

But that mania, too, is part of the Tiger experience and it was there again all week in the Bahamas. You were happy to see him and excited about what could be next. Tiger was back.