With an eye on the Masters, Tiger Woods tempers expectations for his comeback at Torrey Pines

Until quite recently, Tiger Woods would have never entered a tournament — from the Greenbrier Classic to the Masters — without proclaiming he was there to collect a trophy.

These days, the situation is a lot different and very much removed from the glory days for the owner of 14 major titles. Tiger concedes that your guess is as good as his as to how he’ll perform at this week’s Farmers Insurance Open, his latest of so many comebacks from injuries.

We’re guessing Woods actually has a little better inkling than any of us on how he’ll do at Torrey Pines, but he still sought to pump the brakes a tad on the runaway TW Hype Train that makes its first stop of 2018 at a San Diego venue that has yielded eight of Tiger’s 79 PGA Tour victories.

After all, Woods’ last return to competition followed the same path — a decent showing at the limited-field, no-cut Hero World Challenge, followed by two meh rounds and a missed cut at Torrey. A week later, back spasms forced him to quit after a horrendous first day in Dubai and, after just three rounds (and a subsequent lumbar fusion, his fourth back procedure since March 2014), he was sidelined for a year.

What’s different this time around? Most important, Woods can go about his business without the physical discomfort and agony that dogged him for so long and had the then-41-year-old limping around like a man twice his age.

“I have no more pain in my back. My back is fused,” Woods told reporters on the eve of Thursday’s first official start in 12 months. “That wasn’t the case last year. I was trying to manage the disc and the vertebrae but it’s all finished now … and quality of life is infinitely better than it was last year at this point.”

So, according to several eyewitnesses, is his golf game.

Rory McIlroy, for one, was wowed by what he witnessed during a November round with Tiger. On the comeback trail himself, McIlroy promised Woods watchers that his boyhood idol would “stun” the world with his proficiency.

Ex-coach Hank Haney was positively effusive in predicting a successful rebound for his former student.

“I look at the swing that I saw yesterday,” Haney said Wednesday on his daily SiriusXM PGA TOUR Radio show. “My goodness, his swing looks great. There is no way in the world that Tiger Woods cannot win golf tournaments with that swing.”

Haney said he anticipated Tiger finishing in the top 10 this week and that he would not be shocked if Woods were in contention or even won the event.

Woods, who said he played six days a week at his home course after the Hero, exercised caution in predicting how he would do this week in real competition.

“My expectations have tempered a little bit because I haven’t played,” said Woods, who expressed excitement about taking on a full tour schedule for the first time since 2015.

“I just want to start playing on the tour and getting into a rhythm of playing a schedule again,” Woods said. “I haven’t done that in such a long time, so I don’t know what to expect … I’m going to grind it, give it everything I possibly have, try and put the ball in the right position, make some putts, and try to work my way up the board.”

As to whether Torrey, with his history of success there, were a comfortable course for him to mount his comeback on, or would prove a difficult task given the deep rough and firm, fast greens, Woods shrugged his shoulders.

“I haven’t played. I’ve got to start somewhere and try and get my game and my feels back,” he said. “I just really haven’t played tournament golf basically since Wyndham [Championship] in 2015. It’s been a long time … It’s been a full year since I played on the tour.”

There’s also the small matter of the tour’s young sprouts who blossomed into proven winners while Woods was away. Acknowledging that in the past he would have a winning score in mind, he conceded he had no idea what to expect from guys in this week’s field like newly anointed world No. 2 Jon Rahm.

“I’m usually pretty good at calling a number before a tournament starts,” he said. “But I haven’t seen a lot of these young guys play.”

Assuming Woods finishes the Farmers with no physical setbacks, he’ll tee it up next at the Genesis Open at Riviera on Feb. 15. Conventional wisdom has him adding the Honda Classic, a week after Riviera, and the Arnold Palmer Invitational (March 15-18) to his calendar as he works toward the men’s first major of the season.

“I’m just trying to build toward April … I’m looking forward to playing a full schedule and getting ready for the Masters,” he said. “From ’96 on, it’s been that way, to try and get ready for Augusta and there’s no reason to change that.”

Woods gets started Thursday off Torrey Pines South’s first tee at 10:40 a.m. local time in the company of Patrick Reed and Charley Hoffman. The trio moves to the 10th tee on the North course for a 9:30 golf date on Friday.