Get In The Hole!!!!!

Tiger Clinches Victory

The finest golfer of his generation is getting his swagger back.  Competing in the Arnold Palmer Invitational, Tiger Woods, looked very much like his old self.  The Tiger that we became accustomed to pre-injuries, pre-scandal, and pre-divorce.  A few years ago the talk was when would Tiger break Jack Nicklaus’ Major Championships record.  That talk has now turned into if he will do it.

Admittedly, Tiger has been a shadow of his former self the past few years as he has tried to recover from injuries, the self inflected destruction of his reputation, and life.  This season he has shown flashes of the player that was the world’s number one ranked golfer from 1997 to 2010.  Yet, you still wondered if he would ever completely regain form.  He would dominate for two rounds and lose it the last two.  Then you would see him struggle the first two rounds, only to dominate in the last two.  He couldn’t seem to put together a complete game.  To top it all off, he had to pull out of the WGC Cadillac Championship due to an Achilles injury that reappeared.  So the questions about if he would break Nicklaus’ record seemed valid.

This weekend, at the Arnold Palmer, Tiger finally put four solid rounds together.  He posted rounds of 69, 65, 71, and 70.  This was his first time with four rounds under par since the 2010 Masters.  He delivered a 13 under par for the tourney, winning by 5 strokes despite fighting windy conditions for the duration.  Even with the windy conditions, Tiger only had 5 bogeys and 1 double bogey in 72 holes.

There has been 108 PGA events and 72 different PGA winners since Tiger’s last victory.  His seventh victory at Bay Hill today, gives him his 72nd PGA Tour victory and moves him into seventh place in the FedEx Cup Standings.  It also increases his confidence going into the Masters at Augusta National.  There is one thing that is certain, the re-emergence of Tiger makes golf interesting again.