Why this Tiger Woods comeback has raised expectations

Rory McIlroy says to expect the unexpected from Tiger Woods.

To Zach Johnson, there’s no one with a golf club in his hand more awesome than a healthy Woods playing well.

Ex-coach Hank Haney really believes Woods will notch PGA Tour victory 80 this year while Claude Harmon III, another former instructor, would be “shocked” if 2018 ends without a W for Team Tiger.

Dustin Johnson’s not so sure and preaches patience when it comes to Woods’ latest return to competition.

All aboard the Woods hype train

As the buzz surrounding Woods’ impending start at Torrey Pines grows into a loud roar, everyone — from his peers, to Tiger-ologists like Jim Nantz, to the most casual sports fan — has an opinion about how Woods will perform in his first official PGA Tour event in 12 months and beyond. Heck, even a former president offered a take on Woods 4.0 (there’s a new “lightness” to Woods, President Barack Obama said after the two played golf at The Floridian earlier this month, according to Golfweek.com).

Woods, as you should know by now, is scheduled to tee it up with Patrick Reed and Charley Hoffman Thursday morning at the Farmers Insurance Open in the most recent attempt to revive his career after multiple back surgeries.

And while the second-winningest golfer in tour history will take on a stout field that includes four of the world’s top-10 players at a track on which he has prevailed eight times, Woods will also be competing against his dominant, glory days self as well as the expectations of fans and the media.

Prepare to be stunned

Many of those offering prognostications foresee Woods adding to his trophy collection in 2018.

“This is a different Tiger,” McIlroy, who played a round with Woods in November at Jack Nicklaus’ Bear’s Club (before his boyhood idol finished T9 at December’s Hero World Challenge), recently told The Telegraph. “He can stun the world — again.

”When he came back in 2013, all he did was hit a big cut and was getting himself around with his chipping and putting,” noted McIlroy, who kicked off his own mini-comeback from a rib injury with a T3 finish in Abu Dhabi. “I was on my way there worrying thinking, ‘what will I see?,’ but it was incredible … He’s got everything again now.”

McIlroy’s not the only Woods watcher encouraged by what he’s seen from the former No. 1, who starts the week ranked 647th in the world.

Coaches’ corner

“If he tightens up his short game I expect a top-10 finish,” Haney told Golfweek.com a few days ago. “I’m very confident in this comeback. I think he will win this year. I really believe that. I don’t see why he won’t play well … He probably has to have an A-minus game now to win. I don’t think he needs a A-plus game. I mean, he’s still Tiger Woods.”

After witnessing the round with Obama, Harmon was even more effusive in his praise of Woods’ status.

“He looks like he’s going to be relevant, and he hasn’t looked like he could be relevant for the last three, four years,” said Harmon. “He’s driving it a long way. I mean he’s hammering it.”

Nantz compares Woods to Tom Brady

Nantz, the lead CBS analyst and voice of the Masters, is among those in the booth or on the TV set who anticipate a positive week from Woods.

“I expect him to play really well [at Torrey],” Nantz said during a Tuesday teleconference. He added he expected Woods to make the cut, which would be a “really good start” to Woods’ 2018 tour debut. “As a starting point, let’s see him get to the weekend.”

With everyone from the talking heads on Golf Channel to Brady himself comparing one “megastar” to another, Nantz likened Woods’ return to competition after a lengthy layoff to an improbable scenario in which the New England Patriots’ quarterback took a chunk of time off and then returned to the huddle.

“Imagine if Tom Brady had taken a step away from the game and we didn’t really see him compete in five years … and all of a sudden … No. 12’s on the field again,” Nantz hypothesized about Woods contending through the weekend. “That is what it’s going to look like this Sunday.”

Keeping up with the kids

Of course, Woods will not be competing in a bubble; he must contend with all those youngsters who grew up idolizing him, are regularly touted as the next Big Cat, and who would like to go down the stretch against a vintage Woods.

”My self-confidence and self-belief would say, ‘Yes,’” 2017 tour Player of the Year Justin Thomas told the AP’s Doug Ferguson about whether he could have beaten Woods at the pinnacle of the Tiger Slam years. “But everything I’ve watched and everything I’ve heard ... no.”

For those tour players itching to go up against a fully fit, robust Woods, Zach Johnson warned them to be careful what they wished for.

“I’d love to have these young guys that are dominating the game have a piece, just one year, of what we experienced,” Johnson said. He is one of 78 competitors to finish second to Woods on tour, according to Ferguson.

After the days of Ben Hogan, Sam Snead, Arnold Palmer, and Nicklaus came the Greg Norman, Fred Couples, and Seve Ballesteros era, noted the two-time major champion, who recalls vividly the days when the Woods mystique was a real thing.

“Then it pretty much went into Tiger and it was Tiger for a long, long time … If he’s playing well and he’s healthy then there’s no individual in the world who amazes me more than him on the golf course.”

Of the 17 wins on world No. 1 Dustin Johnson’s resume, Ferguson noted the only one Woods played in was the 2010 BMW Championship, where he shared 15th place.

”If I’m playing my best? Yeah, I’d take him,” Johnson told Ferguson. “But over the course of a season? For nine years, 10 years in a row? He kept that level up for 10 years. That’s very, very sick. My best versus his best, I think it’s going to be neck and neck. But he was playing at his best for 10 years.”

But that was then and now is now and Johnson is taking a cautious approach toward how Woods will perform this time around — especially since we’ve all been to this rodeo before and Woods missed the cut at this tournament in 2017 in his last attempted comeback.

“Obviously it’s hard to say what he’s going to do until he actually does it,” Johnson told reporters ahead of last week’s Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship. “I don’t like to speculate on what someone’s going to do.

“I feel like I’ve played with him a couple times and he seems to be swinging it very well and he seems to be healthy,” Johnson observed. “We’ll see.”

It’s go time

With one day to go before Woods trots out his new, coach-less swing for the world to see, there’s really nothing for his boosters and critics to do but make like Johnson and wait and see.

Indeed, Nick Faldo drew the only conclusion one can before Woods hits his first real shot that matters since he withdrew with back spasms after carding a miserable 77 a year ago in Dubai.

“We got Tiger coming back so finally, rather than talking and speculating, we will get some of the answers about where Tiger is [physically and mentally],” he said during the CBS conference call.

As for the worst-case scenario for this week? That would be another injury knocking Woods out of the game.

“I just don’t want to see him hauled off in a golf cart again,” said Golf Channel analyst Tim Rosaforte on Monday, referring to Woods’ many injury-related withdrawals.

Safe to say, no one wants that.