Tiger Woods' Professional Expectations are Very...Low?

Tiger Woods will not win a major championship this season and probably will not win one professional golf tournament in 2009.

Casual golf fans worldwide had a somewhat satisfying partial release of their collective accumulated anticipation when Tiger Woods won the first match of his return to competitive golf.

It certainly was exactly what the PGA Tour and sports fans everywhere needed to console their fears of a world that may never be the same after a long winter and brutal financial off-season.

Although the timing of Eldrick's red carpet return to the game was as smooth as an Ernie Els three-iron, Tiger's actual performance in this event was exactly as bad as expected. I'm sorry, Tiger fans, but let's sniff the faint scent of reality for a moment, a second round defeat is equal to missing the cut.

Of course we cannot expect much more given the situation, not for a mortal. But this is the same Tiger Woods who hobbled through a heroic five round U.S. Open battle to a human expectations murdering victory less than one year ago.

What should concern Tiger Woods fans is that he was actually satisfied with his performance.

Tiger chooses his words as carefully as he chooses the line to start a Sunday afternoon birdie attempt in April. The words he chose to say after both his Thursday victory over Brendan Jones and his Friday loss to Tim Clark were basically the same, "I felt good out there, I hit the ball very well."

In fact Tiger even expressed a pleasant surprise at how quickly he got "it" back. Forgive me for the blasphemy here but I didn't see "it" from Tiger. I saw some quality professional golf being played, but not "it" the way I assume Tiger Woods defines it.

It really wasn't a competitive performance at all and that is exactly what Tiger expected.

If that performance from Tiger matched his expectations, as he said it did, then for the first time in history Tiger Woods has very low expectations of himself. His competition should be encouraged.

The strategy of choosing a match play event for his return to competitive play is also telling.

Match play golf does not even remotely require the same consistency or high level of skill as traditional PGA Tour events in order to compete. The difference between victory and defeat in a four day stroke-play event is generally only one or two strokes out of a competitive field of 132 players or more.

In match play, they begin with a field of 64 and only keep track of actual strokes one hole at a time. A triple bogey will not ruin your entire week in match play. Tiger's uncertain performance expectations could not have chosen a more forgiving venue for evaluation.

Tiger, as the #1 player in the world, was matched with the worst player in the field for the opening day and it took him 16 holes to be victorious. This round was as close to a gimme as they allow in professional sports.

He is non-committal about playing in the upcoming World Golf Championships at Doral where he has won three of the last four hosted tournaments. I would assume that he needs at least two actual full field, four round events under his belt, for game evaluation reasons, prior to Augusta's April Masters Tournament.

I don't believe Tiger can return to dominance, or even be marginally competitive by then, but what I do or don't believe is inconsequential to Tiger's success.

What Tiger expects of himself is what will define his accomplishments, and right now, Tiger expects very little.