Masters 2012: Tiger Woods Would Be Smart To Loosen Up

Tiger Woods is back, or darn close to it, just in time for The Masters.

His swing is back: He ranks first on the PGA Tour this season in driving.

His putting is back: His short game has been trending upward over the past six months.

His confidence is back: He just earned his first win in 30 months at the Arnold Palmer Invitational.

Most importantly, Tiger's smile and charisma are back. There's a willingness to cajole himself about his age, to share stories. There's a sense that, now two-and-a-half years removed from the Thanksgiving from hell, Tiger's found some semblance of peace, even amidst the annoyance of former swing coach Hank Haney's tell-all book.

And in a sport as mentally demanding as golf, that sort of calm and clarity can make all the difference.

Only time will tell if Tiger is truly back on that track, if there's once again room for joy as well as pain in a game that has seemed so much more like a grind to him in recent years. He's managed to register top-10s at Augusta National in each of the last seven years, including back-to-back fourth-place finishes while his physical and emotional well-being were coming apart at the seams.

It's difficult to do much better than that, even with a sound mind and a sound body, but if anybody can pull it off, it's Tiger Woods.

That's not to say that Tiger is back to being the Tiger of old, the same specter of a man who hung ominously over the field, felling his challengers with a steely stare and a fist pump of determination.

He's not there yet, and might never be given the drastic changes he's undergone in every phase of his life, as well as the significant uptick in talent with which he now has to compete. Today's young guns, most notably Rory McIlroy, haven't come up through the ranks with Woods looming as large as he once did.

The intimidation might be gone, as might the prodigious power, but Tiger's still Tiger, still the best bet to catch Jack Nicklaus in the record books.

And if Woods is smiling and laughing, enjoying the game of golf again rather than just playing it, everyone had better watch out. 

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