Golf: I feel my intensity coming back, says Tiger Woods

Tiger Woods did not waste his words when asked if he could win the US PGA Championship

Tiger Woods plays out of a bunker during a practice round for the PGA Championship

Tiger Woods did not waste his words when asked if he could win the US PGA Championship on the back of one poor performance in almost six months. “Of course,” he said. “This is what I’ve been gearing up for.”

Never one for faux modesty, Woods, 44, also dismissed the suggestion that playing the first major of a mixed-up year behind closed doors would affect him. Rory McIlroy has said fan-less golf can make it hard to focus and has blamed a “wandering mind” for an inconsistent post-lockdown. Given that Woods has been grouped with McIlroy, 31, and Justin Thomas, 27, for the first two rounds at Harding Park in San Francisco, his contrasting opinion was interesting.

“As for the focus part of it, I haven’t had a problem with that,” he said. “Those four rounds (at the Memorial Tournament last month), I was pretty into it. It’s different than most of the time when you go from green to tee and people are yelling and trying to touch you, but as far as energy while competing, it’s the same. I’m pretty intense when I play. I’m into what I’m doing.”

It is now more than a year since golf had a major. Remember it? McIlroy sent his first tee shot out of bounds, damaging a fan’s phone and setting off alarm bells. Woods missed the cut. Shane Lowry won. The Portrush native Graeme McDowell described that as the exclamation mark after the dream. That was the British Open. Then sport shut down.

Question marks became the thing. Lowry is still the champion golfer owing to the Open’s cancellation, but Thursday night brings a major to a course where Woods has a decent record via his WGC win in 2005 and 100 per cent Presidents Cup salvo in 2009.

How good is this version of Woods? We have barely seen him this year and there have been customary fitness woes. He actually served warning of how it was going to be back at Portrush last year.

“Things are different,” he said then. “I’m going to have my hot weeks, I will win tournaments, but there are times when I’m just not going to be there.”

He has been true to his word. While many may think his inactivity will work against him this week, we should remember that he won the Zozo Championship in Japan in October on the back of not playing a Tour event for more than two months. He is capable of success off a short run-up.

He has played twice since lockdown. The first was a knockabout charity affair on his backyard course. The second was the Memorial Tournament in which Woods did well enough for two of his four rounds but was 15 shots behind the winner, Jon Rahm.

“It’s just competitively I haven’t played that much, but the results that I’ve seen at home (mean) I’m very enthusiastic about some of the changes I’ve made,” Woods said.

The thing with modern golf is that form is temporary and so is class. Fields are deep, domination hard. Having gained and lost the world No 1 ranking in a fortnight, Rahm shrugged: “It’s going to be hard to have a Tiger-esque case now.”

Woods now is one of many rather than a one-off, but he has won three times in the past 23 months, which is the same strike-rate as Dustin Johnson and better than Rahm, Tommy Fleetwood and Bryson DeChambeau.

He said he is in better shape than when he turned up to Bethpage Black for last year’s staging. “After I won the Masters it was a bit of a whirlwind,” he said. “We got a chance to go to the White House, my family, and meet our president. I celebrated winning the Masters for quite some time, came to Bethpage, played awful and it felt like Brooks (Koepka) beat me by 30 shots in two days. My game is better than it was going into that.”

Woods is going for his 16th major. Jordan Spieth has another shot at the career grand slam. McIlroy is trying to end a six-year major drought. Tyros such as Matthew Fitzpatrick look primed to ruffle some feathers.

Woods has not merely been sitting on his yacht and writing his memoirs. “I’ve been trying to prepare for the three (majors), trying to figure out my schedule and training programs and playing prep,” he said.

The rough is up and the clouds low. Woods says the cool conditions mean he will not have his normal “range of motion”, but of course he still believes he can have one of his hot weeks. This, then, is where golf gets serious.

The Times