Honda Classic results: Justin Thomas wins and Tiger Woods just keeps getting better

The Masters is just over a month away and I can’t believe I’m typing this ... but Tiger Woods looks like he will be a factor at the first men’s major of the season. The word “factor” is a deliberately nebulous term I am going to taunt you with because I don’t want to go all in yet. I’m scared and do not want to get burned. But this is the best Tiger has looked in years. The comeback feels different and after a week at the Honda Classic, just his third start of the year, you can put a little faith and confidence behind those often unhinged and delusional Tiger hopes for Augusta National.

Tiger finished the Honda Classic at even-par, which put him just outside the top 10. He tied for 12th after a weekend of flirting with the top 5 and getting close to the top of the leaderboard. His game looked good through the bag and it was a week that already has me recalibrating expectations for Augusta and the rest of the summer. The question will always be health and sustainability, but after playing back-to-back events, those ever-present fears can be soothed just a little bit.

The hype around Tiger’s swing speed is now based in reality. We’d heard so much about how far he was hitting the ball at the end of last year. But we’d heard that in the past and never really know what to trust about the whispers and mumurs coming out of those friendly games at the country clubs in South Florida. Then we saw it in action at the Hero World Challenge. It was real, but was it replicable or just a one-week flash-in-the-pan? We have now seen it hold up through three starts. The average may come down as there are more #data points to accrue over the course of a season, but Tiger’s swing speed is officially back to being elite.

That particular swing came during his first sub-70 round in more than 900 days on the PGA Tour.

A big driver and fast swing will only get you so far, however, and Tiger’s ballstriking was back this week in what can be one of the most brutal courses on the PGA Tour schedule. Last week at Riviera, Tiger talked about how he’s hit it pin high his entire career but wasn’t dialed-in like that in Los Angeles. This week, he was, with an average proximity to the hole of 29 feet and 3 inches. That was good enough for first in the entire field when he finished his fourth round, an even-par 70.

The driver is always going to be a little wild, even if he’s back to hitting 325-yard bombs. But it was Tiger’s ballstriking that was the major plus this week and that gets him back inside the top 15 of an official PGA Tour event. It peaked early in both rounds this weekend, including on Sunday, when he posted three birdies in his first eight holes to make it interesting. Tiger worked the ball all ways and through the South Florida winds.

His putting was uneven at times, but it was hard to measure that reliably this week. The greens at PGA National, from all accounts, were some of the worst these pros have seen on the PGA Tour. They were in poor shape and it became a craphsoot on what kind of roll you would get. Tiger diplomatically said as much after his first couple rounds. Still, Woods was +1.09 in strokes gained putting this week.

Tiger was undone by the Bear Trap, the three-hole stretch from 15 through 17 that’s bordered by water and brutalizes the field every year. Tiger was 8-over in that stretch all week, and 8-under everywhere else.

I’m not telling you to expect Tiger to win the Masters. But the way he’s improving, and sustaining, through the first quarter at least makes it a dream worth dreaming. He knows that course better than anyone on earth and his health and his game are now rounding into form. We’ll have a full report card of Tiger’s week at the Honda on Monday, but it’s hard to walk away from the week in Palm Beach with anything but optimism.

Here are your final results from PGA National. Outside of the Tiger-mania, we got Justin Thomas’ eighth win in his last 31 starts. That’s an absurd pace that puts him in the company of Tiger and Jordan Spieth.

The final scores from the Honda: