This weekend at The Players Championship was the latest and most illustrative example of Tiger Woods being back and close to winning again on the PGA Tour. There were dozens of shots demonstrating this, especially when they were all patched together for a 65-69 weekend that rocketed him from making the cut on the number on Friday to, at one point, tied for second on Sunday. This was the best he looked on the greens and the best he felt striking the ball. But one moment that indicated to me he’s back and close was perhaps the lowlight on Sunday night. It was the ball he dumped in the water at TPC Sawgrass’ island hole, the par-3 17th, arguably the most famous hole on the Tour.
Tiger Woods used The Players to show he’s close to winning again, even when he hit it in the water
Actually, hitting it in the water is now good (OK, maybe not but Woods’ failure at TPC Sawgrass’ 17th hole is demonstrative of something more).
To be clear, this was a bad shot. There’s nowhere to hide a bad shot at that hole. You can’t sneak some mis-hit wedge into the middle of the TV broadcast there. I initially thought Woods’ ball slammed into the bulkhead lining the island green, but it was not especially close, plunging into the water a few yards short of even hitting the side of that bulkhead. He signaled to his caddie that he thought the wind had changed and knocked it down, but it was also not a pure strike or a good shot.
The play, however, impressed upon me Woods is back feeling it in a different way. Woods tried to absolutely nuke a sand wedge to that traditional right Sunday pin, which was listed at 137 yards on Sunday. He said he had 127 to cover, 133 to get to hole, and that sand wedge was the play. Jordan Spieth had just played a gap wedge barely onto the front of the island. That’s the club Rickie Fowler used multiple times to win in 2015 when he dropped shot after shot right on top of that that same pin position. Woods’ was an ambitious club selection, to be sure. But it showed he was completely fine throwing caution aside and was trusting that he could nuke it based on how he’d been playing all weekend.
We watched Spieth drop his ball juuuuust onto the edge of the green and nearly make an ace. Woods wanted to do the same. He thought he had the club to get it there and that was the best way to pull off the most aggressive play. It would have been easier to take something off a stronger wedge, throw it farther into the back of the green and hope it rolled down over towards the pin. That may have been more sensible. But Woods trusted, given the way he’d hit the ball all weekend, that he could pull off the riskier shot to get just onto the front of the green for the greatest payoff.
Woods has been criticized in recent years, when he was healthy enough to play, of being too safe and conservative in the more critical moments. It was lobbed on Saturday, even as he posted the low round of the day. Golf Channel’s Brandel Chamblee made some intriguing points that the third-round 65 could have been better but Woods throttled down over the final five holes, maybe not fully trusting what he could do on those holes in those moments.
Woods sputtered on that same stretch on Sunday, but the cost at the 17th was not from being too safe or unsure. A wedge shot on 14 was overly ambitious, misjudged, and spun off the green, leading to his first bogey of the day just as he had moved to 2nd place on the leaderboard and as close as he’d be all weekend to winner Webb Simpson. Then came the shot at the 17th, the other hole where he gave shots back. We’re not talking about a round where there were drives scattered all over the course and a constant state of recovery to get back in play. It was two wedges, off by a handful of yards, that were his only big mistakes of the day.
As soon as the ball at the 17th went in the water, I tried to recall the last time, or any time, I’d seen Woods do that at that hole. You tend to remember the moments when the stars put them in the water there, or the implosions from lesser players that take two and three and sometimes four attempts to land safely on that short little hole. But I couldn’t recall Woods ever doing it.
That’s when the NBC broadcast kicked in with the stat that it had been 13 years since Woods put one in the water at 17. Woods was pretty good at golf 13 years ago, so maybe putting it in that famous water hazard means he really is back! He then almost became one of those players needing multiple attempts to get on safely when he threw his ball from the drop zone all the way to the back fringe in that particular corner of the green. It was another super aggressive play in a spot where the cost of not executing that aggressiveness is at its highest.
Woods asked his caddie multiple times the yardages to get over the tier in the middle of the green, and to the pin. He wanted it all the way back there, even if it brought in play rolling over the side of the bulkhead into the water again.
The risk was not just a failure to hit the green, but an ignominious moment at the most famous hole that he knew would be shown repeatedly. A safer play and two-putt par doesn’t make the highlight package. That might enter Woods’ calculations in the past, as he was an uncertain and injured golfer trying to fake it for the millions looking into the fishbowl. The stakes of winning The Players were gone before the 17th hole, but there were still stakes: that potential embarrassment at the highest profile hole on the course (and buckets of world rankings points that could impact status for future events this year). Woods did not care, trusted the way he’d been hitting the ball, and tried to pull off the shot.
He did not pull off the shot, and maybe he can’t pull off the shot anymore. Or maybe he can’t pull off the shot anymore when it’s late in the round on the weekend at one of the biggest events. There are critiques still bubbling out there that the injuries of the past five years obfuscated a Woods closing problem that’s existed since 2009. Those are reasonable counters that can be tested if and when he’s in that position at a major. But I think everything we saw and heard from him this weekend demonstrates he’s close to getting there again.
“I was hitting it high, low, right, left, didn’t matter what it was. I felt like I had control of it today.”
Every indication from Woods himself and the shots themselves are that he no longer has to to fake it or scramble around for five hours to post a respectable score. The shot may have been bad, the decision crazy, and I may be crazier for trying to spin this into a good thing. But Woods is now feeling it, feeling like he’s becoming a complete player again. The shots displayed it this weekend and the attempt to nuke a sand wedge at the 17th hole on Sunday persuaded me even further.
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