Tiger Woods Cadillac Championship: Progress Sets Up Well for Augusta and Beyond

If you're not a fan of Tiger Woods and have enjoyed his absence from the top of leaderboards, then the rest of this season is going to be rough for you. The way he's playing right now, Tiger will have an extremely successful 2012, which means a major will come his way. 

Slowly but surely, we're getting there. Make no mistake, that isn't the same thing as saying that Tiger will win this week. No, his first round basically eliminated that as a possibility. But we are going to see two more solid rounds that give Woods a finish on the front page of the leaderboard. 

More importantly, he's going to continue setting himself up well to win the Masters, and the season's other three majors.

I don't view winning in the early season as terribly important for Tiger. It would be nice, but the most important thing that he can do is get the feeling of consistently putting good rounds together back in his mind. That will give him a ton of confidence heading to Augusta.

From that point on, winning will be important. 

But for now, the only thing that really matters is continuing to move forward, not suffering any setbacks. Doral is a course that Woods has a tremendous history on, so there is absolutely no reason to think that he will move back at all. 

Also, just because he hasn't won, don't think that Tiger's not shaping his game up perfectly to win the Masters, or any major. 

In most normal tour events, shooting even par in any given round effectively takes you out of the tournament. That isn't the case at the Masters, or any major. In each of his last two rounds, Woods has had an opening round like that (last week was one-over), but come back well afterwards. 

If we see this kind of performance over the first two rounds next month at Augusta, Woods will be very high on the leaderboard going into the weekend. 

What we're seeing a lot of from Tiger in tournaments is three good rounds and one bad one. The positive sign is that the bad rounds are moving in the right direction, much closer to average than bad. 

The other good thing is that if you watch him play, what Woods is doing well is the kind of thing that will translate well to major courses. He's not missing fairways in the way that we've grown accustomed to, which is normally a kiss of death at a major. 

No, when Woods isn't playing well, he's still finding greens and staying in good shape off of the tee, just not putting well. That is something that you can get away with for a round at a major. 

So, there is plenty of reason to be encouraged with his performances. His bad rounds aren't so bad anymore, and the good rounds are getting better. 

All of this will translate to a successful formula at the season's majors. He's not winning now, but Tiger will claim at least one of those. 

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