Monday, February 09, 2009

Will Tiger Return Before Phil Does?

With the news that Tiger Woods now has a son – Charlie Axel Woods was born Sunday -- two questions beg to be answered:
1. When will Tiger return to the PGA Tour?
2. When will Phil Mickelson return to the tour?
In Tiger's case, there's no clear answer when he'll bring his new knee and new baby pictures on tour. The fact that his son was born over the weekend has heightened the speculation that perhaps Tiger will show up at the WGC-Accenture Match Play Championship in three weeks.
Tiger loves match play but it's on a new course which makes you wonder if he'd rather be someplace more familiar. There's also the possibility of consecutive 36-hole days on the weekend were he to reach the quarterfinals, a test he may prefer to avoid right now.
If not the Match Play, I’m guessing we’ll see him at the WCG event at Doral in early March.
By that time, perhaps Mickelson will have arrived.
It has been a dreary start to the year for Lefty, who missed the cut at the FBR Open then scraped his way to a tie for 42nd at the Buick Invitational at Torrey Pines.
Not exactly the start he or anyone else envisioned.
The culprits are familiar -- Mickelson hasn't driven the ball straight enough nor putted it well enough to make himself a factor. That's a bad combination because it's easier to fix one major component than two at a time.
And, by the way, a white belt with black pants and a black shirt, hmmm....
Mickelson has said more than once he thought he was ready for the year, despite taking two months off from golf and only practicing for a week before resuming tournament play. It appears that grueling regimen didn’t effectively knock off all the rust.
The thing about Mickelson is he can turn it around in an instant. After getting the weekend off in Phoenix, it wasn't a stretch to think Mickelson might win at Torrey Pines.
Instead, he sputtered again after a good start on the tough South Course. Now the question is whether he'll right himself along the Monterey Peninsula at the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am this week. Had it been just one bad week, you could brush it off easier. After two straight flame-outs, maybe it's not such a quick fix after all.
Mickelson has won the Pebble Beach event three times in his career. Maybe a little time around Bill Murray, Andy Garcia and 17-Mile Drive will fix what’s ailing Mickelson’s game.
Maybe.

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think the game of golf should be halted until Tiger comes back. It is obvious there was no golf before Tiger and will be no golf after Tiger. I enjoy the game and yesterday was very enjoyable. You people think Tiger invented the game.