Just one word: incredible.
Some time ago I wrote an email detailing how I doubted that Tiger Woods could get over his latest injuries, that resulted in two major back operations, and how age was playing against him in this effort. I was absolutely correct to say these things: not only is it harder for an older body to recover from such things but recovery time was eating into the few years that you would have considered he had left. I am especially glad then that I ended that email by saying that on the other hand I hoped he would recover, however unlikely, and that this is Tiger Woods we are talking about so who knows. Those words seem prophetic now but what has happened in the last few weeks, particularly on Saturday night and Sunday morning of the Valspar Championship, is remarkable to say the least. I should point out now that I am not personally a Twitter officianodo. I have an account but I don’t follow anyone or post anything myself, which is probably not to my benefit but there you are. However, I was away with my son at the time, and unsurprisingly, he is. He was getting regular tweets and other messages - social media had lit up. It was what it had lit up about that really interests me because of what it says about our game and what it says about Tiger Woods. Tiger was second at the end of day three, which is a great story in itself but the majority of the tweets, coming from a variety of sources including Taylormade (he uses their clubs now) and the Golf Channel were about one particular swing. On the 14th he had clocked the fastest clubhead speed recorded by anyone on the PGA tour this year at 129mph. Faster than Finau, Watson or the world number one Dustin Johnson. There are others like J.B Holmes, Justin Thomas and Rory I could mention but they are all way behind him and this is a man with fused vertebrae in his back and who has recovered from countless operations. You’d also think that this was a ridiculous thrash by Tiger but having watched it I can say that it was one of his best swings I’ve seen for some time. He didn’t rush the transition as he sometimes does so he was still behind the ball when he released the club. He finished in balance and because he’d released the club properly he wasn’t trying to ‘save’ the shot with his right side as he often is. All of that is very technical but the bottom line is it demonstrates how close he is to playing at his very best. What Tiger is doing can surely only be described as incredible and I can only see it as a matter of time before he wins again. However, it seems a few other players have suddenly also come into form, most notably Rory McIlroy. Rory continues to be the up and down player that he has always looked - if you compare him to Tiger they are very different. Rory is mercurial; on his day unbeatable then he’ll disappear for a few weeks, whereas Tiger would be far more consistent, but it is fantastic to see him win again, especially with The Masters looming. With that in mind who would you bet on? It’s got to be one of the most wide open Masters for many years. Who is playing well? How about Justin Thomas, Bubba Watson, Rory McIlroy, Justin Rose, Paul Casey, Phil Mickelson, or Jon Rahm who have all either won or been right up there recently. Then we could mention Tiger who will surely win soon and defending champion Sergio who has shown good form recently. Henrik Stenson suddenly seems to have sorted something and you can’t rule out Jordan Spieth or world number one Dustin Johnson although he seems to be the only one not in great form right now. The list goes on and it’s going to be a hard one to predict but surely an amazing showdown.
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