Our First True Look at Tiger Woods' Game Will Come Next Week

Make sure you get all your errands and housecleaning done this weekend because in case you haven’t heard, Tiger Woods will be back in action next week at the World Golf CA-Championship, an event he has won six times.

Golf highlights will actually be shown on local and national news stations and you won’t even need to navigate through ESPN.com to find golf news.  Believe it or not golf will actually appear on ESPN.com’s front page, but then again, it won't really be golf news appearing on the front page, it will be Tiger Woods news

Many thought Woods’ decision to return for the Accenture Match Play Championship last week was somewhat surprising.

On top of being a long and difficult course to walk, the tournament also carried the possibility of having to walk 36-holes on both Saturday and Sunday. 

But, looking back now, it appears that Tiger Woods knew exactly what he was doing when he decided to return for a match play event.

Everyone knows that match play is a very volatile form of golfing competition.

With the extreme level of parity on the PGA Tour today, if any player gets hot for one round, he can probably defeat just about any other player in the event. 

Although last week Geoff Ogilvy was clearly the hottest player in the field, single matches often do not identify the better player, they just identify the better player on that particular day.

For that reason, a match play style event was actually the perfect choice for Woods' return.

If he looses a match, as he did to Tim Clarke in the second round, golf fans would simply chalk it off to him being a victim of the volatile match play format, which is exactly what has happened.

When Woods attends the World Golf CA-Championship at Doral next week, we will get our first true glimpse at just how much rust has accumulated on his game over the past eight months.

There is no cut at WGC events so we will see how Woods' game can hold up through a full 72-hole event. 

Next week there is no hiding behind the unpredictability of a match play format; it is just Woods’ game against the Blue Monster course. 

Although Woods did not play terrible last week, with concessions he was still six-under-par through 32 holes, he did not play great either.

That majority of rust on his game appeared in his iron play.  Woods hit several approach shots that, well, we just are used to seeing from Tiger Woods.  Woods simply did not give himself enough legitimate birdie opportunities to defeat a red hot Tim Clarke in his second round match.

Woods hit the ball well of the tee last week but his much anticipated new short game was just average.

The good news is that Woods' game did not appear too far off from its top form last week and, most importantly, he did not show any symptoms whatsoever of pain in his surgically repaired left knee.

However, if he hasn’t shaken the rust off his iron play by the time he arrives at Doral next week, we are unlikely to see his name near the top of the leaderboard at this event containing the top-77 players in the world.