Tiger Woods's Schedule Is Unexpectedly Open After Lindsey Vonn's Season ...
SAN DIEGO - For someone who feels as much at home here as a Torrey pine, Tiger Woods enters this week's Farmers Insurance Open feeling strangely out of sorts. Because of the PGA Tour's switch to a wraparound schedule that began in October instead of January, Woods, the world's top-ranked player and the reigning player of the year, will make his season debut Thursday from a pot-bunker-size hole in the FedEx Cup playoff race.
While Woods was on the World Cup ski circuit, and then the hospital circuit, in support of his girlfriend, Lindsey Vonn, Jimmy Walker amassed a tour-leading 1,233 points in six events.
Woods, 38, is old enough to remember when top players did not begin their seasons until March.
'Everybody took breaks, never played the West Coast swing at all and showed up, and those guys won the money title, player of the year, and did it that way,' he said.
Those days are long gone, and Woods has nobody to blame but himself. En route to winning 79 tour titles, including seven at this tournament, Woods attracted more athletic youngsters and corporate dollars to the game, turning a niche sport into a global money grab.
It was fitting that Woods accepted his 2013 player of the year trophy on the eve of his first start of the new season. In men's professional golf, the calendar has become one highlight loop. This year's schedule is an ultramarathon that all the tour members are running for the first time, but for Woods it has been especially hard to develop a plan of attack.
His intention was to leave the tour during the Olympics to travel to Russia to watch Vonn try to defend her women's downhill title. Asked in early December whether he would make the trip to Sochi, Woods replied: 'I think that's just day to day. We just don't know how her leg's going to be. We'll just take it day to day, race to race.'
Woods's plans for February were scotched when Vonn, the first American to win a women's Olympic downhill, came to terms with the severity of her leg injury and pulled out of the Sochi Games. She had a second operation on her reconstructed right knee after reinjuring it during a race late last month in France, with Woods watching from the bottom of the hill.
Usually, Woods knows his schedule from one month to the next. On Wednesday, he spoke about his schedule the way he did the FedEx Cup points race: as if he did not have a handle on it.
He will head to Dubai next week for a European Tour event, but will Woods's next start be the tour stop in Los Angeles, the match-play event in Tucson, the tour event near his South Florida home or none of the above?
'That's a very good question,' he said without elaborating.
Woods knows better than most what it must have been like for Vonn to try to win on one good leg. At the 2008 United States Open at Torrey Pines South, the same course that will be used this week, Woods, though clearly in pain from a surgically reconstructed knee and a broken leg, beat Rocco Mediate in a playoff for his 14th major title. The victory moved him within four of the career leader, Jack Nicklaus.
'As far as seeing what she's gone through, I've been through it, only a slightly different version,' Woods said. 'I've never had to do it twice like this, and to do a total reconstruction of the A.C.L.' He added, 'That's tough.'
Woods was sidelined for the last two majors of 2008, but there was always next year. Vonn will have to wait four more for her next shot at Olympic glory.
'To be the first one to ever win in the downhill, that's something no one can ever take away, whether she competes this year or whether she competes four years from now,' Woods said.
Whatever happens the next four days, Woods's playing record here is unassailable. Only 10 other players in this week's 156-man field have as many career tour titles as Woods has wins in this tournament.
'I've played at a high level for a very long time, but it's not easy to do,' Woods said.
Tell that to the elder of his two children, daughter Sam, 6, who last year took a shine to the Torrey pine-shaped trophy that is awarded to the tournament champion because it reminded her of the bonsai tree that is featured in the 'Karate Kid' movies.
'She said, 'You need to get one of those,' ' Woods said.
He explained to her that it was not that easy, that Daddy had to go out and earn it. 'She said, 'O.K., go do it,' ' he said.
After securing a four-stroke victory over Brandt Snedeker and Josh Teater in a weather-delayed Monday finish, Woods brought the Torrey pine trophy home to Florida.
'They put it literally in the middle of the room,' Woods said. 'Everybody was dancing around the trophy.'
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