Tiger Tracker: Woods starting to slip on back nine at HWC

That seems about four phases short of reality, but it’s safe to say nobody expects anything remotely like his unparalleled “Phase I”. “I got it pretty quick”. “To find the feel of the round that quick, that felt good”.

Woods – playing tournament golf for the first time in 466 days, ranked 898th in the world and the oldest player in the field this week at almost 41 – looked dominant early at Albany Golf Club with four birdies on his first eight holes. Also, Tiger Woods was the one to persuade Davis Love III not to rest Reed and his partner Jordan Spieth for one of the sessions. How could anyone be doing this after being away for 15 months? He just couldn’t get off the course without a few mistakes costing him a lot of strokes.

After undergoing two back surgeries, Woods has taken his time returning to competitive golf. Now, all he can think about is the next round. In all, Woods hit 11 greens in regulation and six fairways, and needed 27 putts. “We’ve got three more days”. A good bit of air left the breezy island after Woods’ struggles there, and he added to the dismay with a tee shot in the water at the 18th.

Woods struck the ball well, though his miss with the driver was left. The one thing he said he wanted to work on before Thursday’s round was putting.

MISTAKES: Albany is the type of course that punishes mistakes.

“But he had it fixed, came back and won previous year”.

After hitting a great drive down the fairway, his second went left into bushes and he could only chip out backwards onto the fairway from the tussock of grass in which his ball had finished.

Woods authored several highlights, notably accurate approaches that led to a trio of birdies on Nos. 6-8.

“I know it generally is a half a club, but is it going to be more than that because I haven’t played or is it going to be less than that or be about that?” “I just made a couple mistakes on par fives”. “I can clean that up”.

April 9, 2015 – Horrific chipping at Phoenix and Torrey Pines led Woods to take two months off to fix it.

His lone bright spot came on the par-5 15th when he drove it 340 yards, then hit 7-iron from 199 yards to 12 feet and two putted for birdie.

Woods, 40, had four birdies in eight holes but he bogeyed the ninth after a wayward drive and poor chip.

Woods is second to last after 18 holes, the injured Justin Rose the only player to shoot higher thanks to a bad back.

He won by four shots.

Once upon a time, nobody doubted the fact he was the most dominant golfer ever. “It’s been a long time”, Woods said. I didn’t play the par 5s very well in the middle part of the round and consequently got it going the wrong way. “After that we were jawing pretty good”.

Tiger Woods is really happy to be back playing golf. When he played in the Hero World Challenge last time, he finished last, 26 strokes behind the victor. But Davis managed to recover, come back and win past year which inspired Tiger Woods not to give up. The Hero World Challenge is his first tournament before the 2017 season, where everybody hopes to see his characteristic talent.

Tiger Woods had an up-and-down round in his first PGA start in over a year at the Hero World Challenge in New Providence, Bahamas on Thursday.