Masters 2012: Why Struggling Tiger Woods Will Have Great Fourth Round on Sunday

Tiger Woods is playing bad.

No, he's playing awful. Like, kick-your-club-in-a-fit-of-rage awful. 

Whether his problems reside in his head, in his knee, or wherever, Woods simply hasn't been good this week at Augusta, but that's not to say he won't rebound on Sunday. 

He had a decent start to his tournament, but finished the round bogey-bogey to drop to even. Hey, he was still just four strokes off the lead.

He was seemingly ready to respond as he birdied two of his first three holes on Friday, but Woods fell apart during the last, well, 15 holes. Okay, it was a bad round.

Again, he put together a decent start today, but as it stands now he has bogied two of his last five holes. Currently, all of this inconsistency has put Woods at +3 in 39th place.

Certainly not what most people were expecting, especially after Eldrick won the Arnold Palmer Invitational. Still though, this is just what Tiger does, at least in the last few months it's been what he is accustomed to doing. 

Step one: Tiger comes into a tournament with a lot of momentum, and most pundits dub him as the favorite to win.

Step two: With all the pressure in the world on him, Tiger plays a few inconsistent rounds of golf. He shows instances of his former self, but in the end, he can't string together enough solid puts or pars. He combines a bunch of birdies with a good amount of bogies.

Step three: With the pressure now off, Tiger puts together a fantastic fourth round when winning is all but out of the question. For more information on this step, please see what Tiger did at the Honda Classic. Average round, average round, average round, then bam! Eight-under on Sunday only to finish second. 

Step four: The momentum he builds at the end of one tournament turns into hype for the next one. 

Lather, rinse, repeat. 

Okay, not all of Tiger's tournaments go exactly this way, as he showed at Bay Hill, but it just seems like he recently has the propensity to rebound from poor rounds just when we write him off. 

That's why it's only appropriate that Woods, in his legendary red shirt on his historically best day, is going to have a monster round on Sunday. It probably won't be enough to win, just don't be surprised when he cracks the Top 15 or Top 10.