Tiger Woods Assesses His Performance at the Players; Calls Course Brutal

Tiger Woods still has a lot of rust to remove from his game—more than a couple gallons of CLR cleaner and a wire brush will remove. Even he knows it. The TPC Sawgrass is a great mirror for anyone’s game, and if Woods didn’t know what he needed to improve before The Players, he knew afterward. 

“It’s a brutal golf course,” he said.

His play had ups and downs.

“It was a mixed bag pretty much all week,” he said after his final round at The Players. “A lot of really, really good stuff out there, some mediocre and some bad.”

By his account, he had three sevens during the tournament, including one in the final round.

“Ernie (Els) and I were talking the other day, boy it can turn quick here. You can be going along playing fine, all of a sudden make double here, and it’s like what just happened,” he explained about what is commonplace at TPC Sawgrass.

For example, in the final round he had a double at the 14th hole, typically hardest after the 18th. Woods hit his tee shot into the water hazard on the left of the fairway. He dropped on the next tee forward and then hit a shot that headed again left, but this time on the edge of the fairway bunker in primary rough. From there it was a 124-yard shot that landed in intermediate rough in front of the green. Then he had a bad chip that landed on the fringe, and it was two putts for a seven.

Despite mistakes made this week, Woods feels his errors will get cleaned up over time.

“This course definitely exposes that,’ he admitted. “I reverted back a couple times out there over the course of the week, but I also did some really good stuff out there, too. It’s going to pay dividends in the end.”

He said his short game is coming around.

“I didn’t have one bad warm-up session this week, which is great. So that’s a sign that we’re heading the right direction,” he said. “For the majority of the week, I hit my driver a lot better and definitely a lot further than I had been hitting it. I just wasn’t as sharp with my irons.”

He had several drives longer than 300 yards, but he averaged 276.4, although measured drives for distance purposes averaged 295.5. Given the angles of the fairways and location of trouble at TPC Sawgrass, the driver is not used on every hole.   Woods hit just 50 percent of the fairways and 61 percent of greens.

“Normally I’m a pretty good iron player, and I can get the ball in there tight,” he said. “I had a lot of clubs where I was 8-iron on down, and I didn’t stiff them.”

He is not overly concerned about the state of his game, although it is not yet where he wants it to be.

“Don’t forget I’ve done this a few times throughout my career, and it takes time. I remember going back to that period of time from 1997 to 1999 where I didn’t do anything,” he recalled. “I won one tournament overseas, and that was it. I struggled for a long time before it clicked in.”

On an easier golf course, the problems would not be as magnified, but here, with the design of the course, the pressure to perform is heightened.

“We got water, we got trees, bunkers, wind, different flights, different trajectories. All these things start coming into play now,” he added. “Some of my go-to shots are a little bit different and I got to, obviously, fix that.”

Woods next event is Tiger Jam, next weekend in Las Vegas. His next tournament is The Memorial.

Kathy Bissell is a Golf Writer for Bleacher Report. Unless otherwise noted, all quotes were obtained firsthand or from official interview materials from thePGA Tour, USGA or PGA of America.