Tiger Woods readies to face something he rarely has in golf: No fans

“Well, even in college I had a few people following,” Woods said Tuesday from the Memorial tournament in Dublin, Ohio, the stage for his latest, weirdest return to Tour visibility.

He figures he hasn’t had a round resembling what he’ll experience this week since, well, the 2012 AT&T National at Congressional Country Club in Bethesda, Md. That’s when a derecho brought its unusual rudeness on a Friday night, leaving fairways strewn with branches and ropes savaged by fallen trees. Tour officials opted that the third round that Saturday should occur spectator-less, so that when Woods chipped in on No. 6, for example, Doug Ferguson of the Associated Press made an unofficial count of the various observers and got to 73.

Woods shot 67 that day (and won the tournament the next), and Brendon de Jonge, the former Virginia Tech player who normally would have had a healthy Hokie contingent, said: “I think we had three [spectators] today. Maybe four for a couple holes, but then he left us.”

That third round, Woods said Tuesday, “was the quietest round I’ve ever been involved with in a tournament setting. That’s what the guys are saying now, that it’s a very different world out here, not to have the distractions, the noise, the excitement, the energy, the people that the fans bring. It’s just a silent and different world.”

So it has been the past five weeks, as the PGA Tour has reopened after a cancellation-strewn, 91-day hiatus with low scores and near-zero spectators in events won by Daniel Berger (in a playoff over Collin Morikawa), Webb Simpson, Dustin Johnson (including a 61 on Saturday), Bryson DeChambeau and Morikawa (in a playoff over Justin Thomas).

All that while, Woods has followed by TV or computer at home in Florida, unseen since Riviera in February except for that exhibition in May with Phil Mickelson and a couple of NFL dudes. He said he has been playing golf at Medalist in nearby Hobe Sound, playing more tennis than ever, reading Dean Koontz books and watching carefully such events as the Morikawa-Thomas playoff Sunday in the first of two straight events at the Memorial course.

On that first playoff hole, Thomas, 27, made a putt from way downtown, after which the 23-year-old Morikawa made one from merely downtown to stay afloat, his equation altered from the norm by the lack of any Thomas-stoked roar that, Woods surmised, would have made things “a lot more difficult.”

“So to see J.T. make that putt, he’s screaming, but no one else is screaming,” said Woods, the Memorial winner in 1999, 2000, 2001, 2009 and 2012. “And then when Collin makes it, normally — he didn’t have that much of a reaction, but the whole hillside on 18 would have just erupted. I’ve been there when they’re throwing drinks toward the greens and people are screaming, high-fiving, people running around, running through bunkers. That’s all gone. That’s our new reality that we’re facing. …

“But it’s so different not having the energy of the crowd, and for me watching at home as a spectator and one that has played this golf course and has heard the energy that the fans bring to these holes and these situations, not to have that is very different — very stark, really.”

Woods suggested that age can matter, and three of the first five winners in the hushed format are 27 or younger.

“For some of the younger guys, it’s probably not particularly different,” he said. “They’re not too far removed from college or they’ve only been out there for a year or two, but for some of the older guys, it’s very eye-opening really.”

As for one 44-year-old: “Well, I’ve had cameras on me since I turned pro, so it’s been over 20-some-odd years that virtually almost every one of my shots that I’ve hit on the tour has been documented. That is something that I’ve been accustomed to. That’s something I’ve known for decades. But this is a different world and one we’re going to have to get used to.”

So he has been watching golf not to just watch golf, but, “It was more watching golf to see how it is now, see what our near future, our reality is and our foreseeable future is going to be.”

In Los Angeles in February before the world changed, the man still reigning as Masters champion some 10 months after the Masters he won finished “dead last,” as he called it, 68th, following up a ninth-place finish at Torrey Pines around San Diego.

“Physically,” he said, “I was very stiff at L.A. I was not moving that well. Back was just not quite loose. It was cold. I wasn’t hitting the ball very far, wasn’t playing very well, and consequently I finished dead last. Fast-forward five months later, I’ve been able to train a lot.”

With more healing time than ever, he said, “I feel so much better than I did then.”

Source:WP