Tiger Woods: Match-Play Struggles a Sign of the Times for Tiger

Tiger Woods seemed intent on inspecting every last square inch of the Ritz-Carlton Golf Club during his first-round match at the WGC-Accenture Match Play tournament on Wednesday. 

Or maybe he was all over the place because, well, he was all over the place.

If you happened to miss it, Tiger didn't look so hot on Wednesday. Matched up against Gonzalo Fernandez-Castano, Tiger struggled right out of the gate and was lucky to ultimately walk away a 1-up winner. He did not have a good day out on the links.

Tiger struggled on a couple of different fronts. All too often he found himself well off the fairway and in bunkers, forcing him to improvise to save par. Once he was on the green, he had issues with his putting. Outside of a brilliant 52-foot birdie putt on the seventh, he missed a few too many putts he should have made.

"I hit a couple of bad putts today," admitted Tiger, per ESPN.com. "I had a hard time reading these greens. I talked myself out of two or three putts."

Tiger also admitted that he was playing through a bad cold, which obviously didn't help.

So all in all, it was a rough day.

On the bright side, at least Tiger managed to advance. He should have been defeated, as he would have ended yesterday's round at one over (par) had he been playing a stroke-play event. He managed to survive because he managed to make a few great shots to keep things from getting out of hand, and because Fernandez-Castano simply failed to sealed the deal after he was 1 up through 11 holes.

On the not-so-bright side, what we all saw on Wednesday amounted to yet another glaring reminder that Tiger is just not himself: He didn't judge distances well; he didn't drive well; he didn't putt well; he didn't play well. Tiger has done well to improve his game over the last couple months, but his mechanics and his confidence remain works in progress. They remain works in progress, of course, because consistency is something that continues to elude Tiger.

A noticeable pattern has developed. For every good round of golf Tiger plays, he plays a bad round of golf. The minute he puts a few good rounds together is the minute he ends his two-plus-year drought without an official victory, but it seems this is something none of us should hold our breath for. When you tune in to watch Tiger these days, you really can't have any expectations.

There's really very little that you can say about Tiger. We've known for a while now that he's on the comeback trail, but he remains stuck in the same rut he's been in since his much-hyped return to golf in 2010. There is light at the end of the tunnel, but Tiger is not moving towards it. He'll take the occasional step forward, but then he'll step right back.

Tiger will get out of this rut at some point. But exactly when he will is anybody's guess.