Tiger still working on ‘rep’

By Bill Livingston

The Cleveland Plain Dealer

DUBLIN

Wounded in more than reputation this time, Tiger Woods came to the Memorial Tournament last week as the defending champion.

He didn’t sound like a player ready to contend or defend, because he had played only nine full rounds of tournament golf this season prior to the Memorial.

He had no base of positive experiences on which to rely, other than familiarity with the Muirfield Village course and a personal history that includes four victories on it.

Asked if missing the cut at Quail Hollow in May after a second-round 79 was the low point, Woods said, “No, there have been a lot more low moments than that.”

A neck injury caused Woods to withdraw from The Players Championship the week after Quail Hollow. He said it wasn’t related to the Thanksgiving night car wreck, in which he hit a fire hydrant and a tree, and then watched a wrecker drag the esteem in which the world held him away on a hook.

Woods said he was already struggling with physical ailments as early as this year’s Masters. He tied for fourth place, as Phil Mickelson, the talented rival who once was engulfed by his shadow, not only won, but ratified his place in the court of public opinion as the anti-Tiger.

It was not simply the limited range of motion in Woods’ neck that cut short his first return to the PGA Tour. He called the searing headaches that flared even before the Masters “just unreal at times.” Those are gone now.

But much of what Woods was is gone too, the wreckage still smoldering in his rear-view mirror.

Divorce from his wife, Elin, is widely held to be a matter of when, not if.

Woods did not win a major last year for the first time since 2004. He failed to hold a third-round lead in a major (in the PGA Championship) for the first time ever.

Sam Snead’s record of 82 PGA Tour victories (Woods has 71) and Jack Nicklaus’ record of 18 majors (Woods has 14) no longer seem so sure to be broken.

Tiger is only 34, but he seems to have been around forever. The medical problems that began in a left knee that withstood the torque of his savage swing went on to include a tear in his Achilles tendon and the neck injury.

Golf is a big hitter’s game now, so even though he has lost swing speed with age, he uses one of those drivers that let him just nuke the ball 20 or 30 yards father than in his past.

“But that also brings in more trouble,” he said. “The game has changed so much that you just have to hit the ball out there. You can’t play golf courses laying back because guys are just too aggressive.”

At Tiger’s best, everybody else was playing for second.

That held for when his late father, Earl, was his swing coach and when Butch Harmon was his swing coach and when Hank Haney was his swing coach.

He is his own swing coach now, using videotape to deconstruct the swing that earned him the applause of millions and the adulation of the world.

Maybe it is like watching an old highlight reel now.

Maybe it also recalls memories that can still be revived and a reputation that can still be repaired, if not fully resurrected.