Tiger Woods' Latest Return Tease Preventing Adjustment to a New Reality

Tiger Woods: PGA Tour grinder.

Given a career resume that makes him a mandatory part of chats regarding the game's all-time greats, even suggesting such a label seems blasphemous.

After all, he has 79 tour victories and 14 major championships. The Associated Press deemed him the "Athlete of the Decade" for the first 10 years of the millennium.

He'll be the player today's 40-somethings tell their grandkids they saw in his prime.

But as anyone who got Monday's bulletin from TigerWoods.com can attest, those days feel long gone.

A 199-word missive bearing the Stanford alum's own byline broke the news that a long-awaited return to competition after 14 months will be delayed for what seems like the millionth time.

Just three days after confirming entry at this weekend's Safeway Open at Silverado Country Club in Napa, California, Woods delivered a week-opening downer with a claim that while his health is good and his surgically repaired body is strong, his game (read: psyche) remains "vulnerable and not where it needs to be."

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A shotgun ride alongside a victorious U.S. Ryder Cup team earlier this month woke up the echoes of the now-40-year-old's former greatness, but his own cyber words poured cold water on anyone expecting a precipitous uptick from a current No. 786 world ranking.

"I practiced the last several days in California, but after a lot of hours, I knew I wasn't ready to compete against the best golfers in the world," Woods continued. "This isn't what I wanted to happen, but I will continue to strive to be able to play tournament golf. I'm close, and I won't stop until I get there."

It sounds feasible to the casual ear.

And it might even be reasonable on some level.

Still, no matter how hard his ardent fans rub their decade-old furry head covers, NBC analyst Johnny Miller believes the post-announcement reality remains a return to anything remotely resembling past pre-eminence is even less likely than it had been 24 hours ago.

"It is hard being Tiger Woods. It really is," Miller told Golf Channel (via USA Today's Steve DiMeglio). "Especially if he can't back it up with semblance of the old Tiger Woods. And everybody expects him to come back and play like he did in the year 2000. That is just not going to happen. He has got to break the ice sometime. I hope he picks the right spot."

Unless he changes his assumptions, none of it will matter.

Regardless of where his next drive comes from, the only shot Woods has at even reaching relevance again—let alone dominance—is golf, golf and more golf.

He played just 12 events in 2014-15 and had more missed cuts (four) than top-10 finishes (one).

Unless he's OK with being more nostalgia than necessary, that's the main thing to address. All his waffling over when and where to return is prolonging the inevitable. Golf fans must see him on the course to fully realize who Woods is now instead of expecting him to become the player he once was.

He also needs to be playing regularly to make that same adjustment for himself.

Assuming the body is able—forever a question for a guy with his medical file—the most effective way for Woods to fan the confidence flames will be to exchange his royalty card (read: ego) for one that makes him like any other guy competing each week to make a mortgage payment.

It's a given he'll hit the 2017 majors at Augusta, Erin Hills, Royal Birkdale and Quail Hollow if he's healthy.

He's earned them all and then some.

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But to get to where those weeks are beyond something ceremonial, he has to hit the minors too.

He has to play the Farmers Insurance Opens. He has to play the John Deere Classics. He has to play the Valspar Championships. He needs to get his groove back on the small stages, so that when he gets to the big ones and things go poorly, he has enough feel to get them good again.

Forget Paul McCartney at Madison Square Garden.

To have a chance at a "Glory Days" encore, Woods must be Bruce Springsteen at a state fair.

"It's not a physical issue at all," good friend Notah Begay said, per DiMeglio. "A player gets down when they are hurt. He's not hurt. His next hurdle will be to play more practice rounds, walk more practice rounds, put in more work."

Because at this point, it's as much about the lunch pail as the toolbox.