Tiger Woods: Resurgent Golf Great Hasn't Won Anything Yet

Suddenly, Tiger Woods looks like Tiger Woods again.

On Friday at the Arnold Palmer Invitational, Tiger shot a seven-under 65 to push his overall score to 10-under. That ties him for the lead with Charlie Wi heading into the final two rounds of the tournament, meaning Tiger is in position to win an official PGA tournament for the first time since 2009.

Tiger had everything going on Friday. Per ESPN.com, he hit 17 of 18 greens in regulation and 10 of 14 fairways. He was on target pretty much all day long, and at one point he strung together four consecutive birdies on the front nine.

"It was a solid round of golf," said Tiger.

No kidding, and it's a round of golf that has a lot of people buzzing about how the old Tiger Woods is still out there somewhere.

But none of us should kid ourselves. We've seen this before. Pretty often, actually, and recently to boot.

Remember when Tiger opened his season at Abu Dhabi? He shot a six-under 66 in the third round to jump up the leaderboard. He needed a good final round to come away with a win, but he shot an even 72.

Remember when Tiger was in contention after three rounds at Pebble Beach? He shot a 75 in the final round to finish 15th.

You can go back even further and notice that Tiger posted low scores in various rounds at various tournaments in 2011, only to fall short in every one but the Chevron World Challenge, an unofficial PGA event.

The point is that flashes of brilliance like the one we saw from Tiger on Friday haven't exactly been uncommon during his long winless streak. He's spent much of the time being mediocre, some of it being awful and some of it looking like his old self. 

The good stuff counts for nothing unless Tiger actually manages to string a couple good rounds together to finish out a tournament. Once he does, that's when he'll snap the winless streak he's on.

What Tiger has done at the Arnold Palmer Invitational is string together a couple good rounds to start. He's definitely looked good, but he's not out of the woods yet and he's demonstrated time and again over the last couple years that absolutely nothing can be taken for granted when he's out on the links.

So it's not a great idea to get overly excited about Tiger's great round on Friday. He's tied for the lead, sure, and he has an outstanding shot at scoring a much-needed victory heading into the masters, but we have all the evidence in the world to suggest that Tiger is not a lock for a victory.

If the old Tiger is really out there, he'll show up on Saturday and Sunday like he did on Friday. It could happen, but the odds are just as good that the new and mediocre Tiger will resurface and screw everything up.

If that happens, we'll be right back at square one a couple weeks from now at the Masters.