GOLF

Tiger Woods sees positives despite shooting 76

Steve DiMeglio
USA TODAY Sports

NASSAU, Bahamas – Rickie Fowler walked onto the range Sunday at Albany Golf Club and spoke for a majority of golf fans worldwide.

Tiger Woods reacts to a missed putt on the third hole during the final round of the Hero World Challenge at Albany, The Bahamas on Dec. 4 in Nassau, Bahamas.

“Nice to see the red shirt on Sunday again.”

Tiger Woods just smiled in his famous Sunday wardrobe.

Get used to seeing it again. Woods is back — as long as his back holds up.

His return to competitive golf after an absence of nearly 16 months — which included two surgeries to his troublesome back — was a success on nearly all counts as the positives far outweighed the negatives. This despite the final-round 76 and the final-hole double bogey as he finished 15th in the elite 17-man field, 14 shots behind Hideki Matsuyama, who won at 18 under and was two clear of Henrik Stenson. It was Matsuyama’s fourth victory in five starts and he was a staggering 90 under during that stretch.

Woods played 72 holes without issue and unleashed some max effort swings when he wanted to. The club twirls were back. His swing was “awesome,” as more than one player said, as they emphasized the speed and power and effortless action Woods presented. His haunting chipping woes are gone. He made 24 birdies – against six double bogeys and eight bogeys – and shot 73-65-70-76 to finish at 4 under.

Tracking Tiger: Follow hole-by-hole look at Woods' Saturday round

“Getting back to this point is beyond anything that I've ever experienced in my lifetime,” Woods said. “The pain issues that I had, it was rough. … Quite frankly there were some pretty dire times where I just couldn't move.

“So big picture? It feels good. It feels good to be back out here playing again, competing and trying to beat the best players in the world. I missed it.”

While he gave every indication that good stuff is at hand, Woods knows there’s plenty of work to do. He likely won’t play again for at least seven weeks, perhaps making his 2017 debut in the Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines the last week of January.

"I felt like I did some really positive things, I really did,” Woods said. “I'm pleased about that and I just need to clean it up. I made a lot of silly mistakes. … I'm going to take two weeks off here, get my weight back up, get everything organized, then start the process of testing, training and getting a feel of what is best for me. It was nice to have my speed back, hit some balls out there with some aggression again and not have to worry about anything.”

Caddie Joey LaCava was excited to see his player get through the week.

“He’s upright No. 1. You laugh but that’s good,” LaCava said. “I love the fact he was hitting a lot of shots that he was picturing in his mind, like right-to-left wind and hitting a little hold-up cut shot with mid-irons, and hitting the little low, semi-stinger with the longer irons. And when he were downwind, getting the ball up in the air and bombing it.

“There were plenty of good shots, plenty of good things to take away from here. I wasn’t going to compare him to the rest of the field … they’ve been playing all year and they’ve been playing great. Honestly my goal was to get him through five rounds (counting the pro-am) on his feet. That was big.”

And going forward?

“I’m excited,” LaCava said. “You never know what’s going to happen, but he looks good walking, looks good over the ball and looks good after he’s done playing, and those are all positives.”

Woods’ colleagues agreed.

“Only Tiger,” Matsuyama said through a translator, “could take a year and a half off and put up the numbers that he's putting up this week.”

“His swing looks great,” Brandt Snedeker said. “It looks like he slowed the rhythm down a little bit. I’ve been really impressed.”

Jordan Spieth said it once again was good to hear the roars Woods produced, great to see him swinging the club like he did this week.

“I just hope he’s given time,” Spieth said. “His swing looks awesome. It looks like he’s going aggressively into the ball. If I was off that amount of time, I would be very tentative into the ball.”

When asked how much time should be given Woods, Spieth didn’t hesitate.

“A year,” he said. “I think it would be good for him (in 2017) to play two tournaments back-to-back weeks and see how he feels. Each week after a week off you make kind of a mental error you wouldn’t have made if you were going back to back. I play my best golf when I play back-to-back weeks or three in a row, four sometimes. Just feeling like you get into a groove. …

"Yes, a full year. How much time has he had off? Give him that much time on. The world we live in as fans, as spectators, it’s a what-have-you-done-for-me-lately world so I don’t think it will happen. But he’s been very patient with himself in his comeback.”

PHOTOS: TIGER WOODS' RETURN TO COMPETITION