5 Things Tiger Woods Must Do to Have a Successful 2016 PGA Tour Season

2015 wasn't exactly the Year of the Tiger. 

What was supposed to be a comeback from an injury-plagued 2014 campaign began with the question "Does Tiger Woods have the yips?" Progressed to, "Will Tiger Woods ever contend again?" And ended with, "Will Tiger's career ultimately be derailed by injury?/Will he be able to bounce back from yet another back surgery?"

Woods missed the cut in three of the four major championships. He withdrew from the Farmers Insurance Open in February with a back issue and was out of commission to the Masters. At the Memorial Tournament, an event he has won five times, he posted a third-round 13-over 85, the worst score of his career. For the year, Woods made just six of 11 cuts and only recorded one top-10 finish. 

All this is to say, Woods will need both progress in key areas and a measure of luck to do better in 2016. 

And how do we define "progress" and "success?" Considering that Woods' last campaign of any note, 2013, featured five victories, it seems reasonable to say two or three wins would constitute a measure of success relative to the mess of 2015. Contending in a major in 2016 (let alone winning one) is likely a pipe dream. 

Here are five things Woods must do better in 2016.

Get Healthy, Stay Healthy

Chuck Burton/Associated Press

The Tiger Woods Injury Timeline is a hideous thing. And it keeps getting new additions. 

The two most recent entries are the most significant, assuming the rest of TW's battered body is at least functioning at a passable level, per ESPN.com.

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April 1, 2014: Back surgery. Woods announces he will miss the Masters after undergoing a procedure, called a microdiscectomy, for a pinched nerve, which has been hurting him for several months. Woods said he will return to golf "sometime this summer," which he did in late June at the Quicken Loans National

Sept. 16, 2015: Back surgery. After missing the cut in three of the four majors of 2015 but posting his best finish of the year in his final start, in August, Woods underwent a second microdiscectomy surgery and hopes to return in "early 2016."

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Even assuming Woods makes a full recovery from surgery and returns to the tour in January or February, he'll have spent the majority of the offseason doing things other than practicing and playing golf. Which, after the worst statistical year of his career, is exactly what he needed to be doing. 

Woods needs to first recover successfully from the September surgery. He then needs to practice and return to competition in earnest and be able to sustain other aspects (practicing and competing regularly) to lay the foundation for any sort of success throughout 2016.  

Without this bedrock element of health, Woods will be looking at another winless season. 

Dial in the Driver

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Tiger Woods was very good in 2015...when he found the fairway, which he didn't do often, hitting just 55.75 percent of fairways (163rd on tour, if he would have had the required number of rounds to be part of the official statistics). 

Consider, on approaches from 125-150 yards Woods was 29th on tour. On approaches from 150-175 yards, Woods would have led the PGA Tour. Likewise on approaches from 175 to 200 yards. 

In other words, Woods' iron swing is mechanically doing quite well. He simply needs to stop putting himself in jail so frequently off the tee. (More on how he can fix his driver issues in the final slide) 

More of that, coupled with the improvement indicated in the next slide, and he'll stop losing .908 strokes to the field per round.  

Get It Together Around the Green

Jared C. Tilton/Getty Images

If you watched Tiger Woods through his periods of dominance in the 2000s, this will blow your mind: Woods has the worst short game on the PGA Tour. Or at least he would have in 2015, had he played enough rounds to qualify for the tour's official statistics.

Here's a look a how bad he was in key areas (and where he would have placed statistically). 

• Scrambling (The percent of time a player missed the green but makes par or better): 46.77% (187th, worst on tour) 
• Sand saves: 35.42% (185th, worst on tour)
• Scrambling from 10-20 yards (a key statistical area): 50.00% (183rd, second-worst on tour)

Simply put, Woods, whose short has historically been in the top quarter of players on tour, needs to get these issues under control to have any type of respectable season. 

A suggestion on how to do this? Stop thinking about "release patterns" and go back to being the kid who hit every variety of shot from every variety of lie to the putting green until the wee hours. 

Face Reality

JIM WATSON/Getty Images

Moving into the less concrete/statistically based areas, Tom Stickney, a Golf Magazine Top 100 Teacher, had some interesting ideas regarding what Woods needs to do in a recent piece for GolfWRX. 

Stickney believes what many have observed: Woods is simply trying too hard to make things happen on the golf course.  

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At some point, golfers have to stop trying so hard and trust that the practice they’ve put in, along with their natural ability, will allow great shots to happen. Tiger has fallen into the trap of trying too hard and must allow himself some levity so he can enjoy the fruits of his labors again.

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And in the search for mechanical perfection and the mastery of various swing moves, Woods has gotten away from the creative brilliance that has defined much of career. 

Stickney, an expert on that which he speaks of, has a clever suggestion for how Woods can fix this element of his game in the upcoming season. 

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Go back to hitting big hooks and slices, low shots and high shots, stingers and spinners in practice until you can begin to trust your talent again. When golfers vary their practice in this way, their mechanics almost always improve because they shift their focus from making a perfect swing to making a perfect shot.

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Not Attempt a Major Overhall

Jared C. Tilton/Getty Images

Minor tweaks, particularly to the driver swing, are all Woods really needs to get things back on track from a mechanical standpoint. 

The problem with this perspective, as Woods' former coach, Hank Haney, alleges, is that Woods has some version of the "driver yips." The guy reportedly pipes his driver on the range but struggles to take it to the course. Of course, as detailed below, Woods' head-dropping is less extreme on the range where he makes a smoother, gentler swing. 

Thus, we'll assume Woods' problem is more mechanical than mental. 

Woods' swing issues with the driver seem to boil down to an extreme head drop that results in a pronounced inside-out swing, often coupled with a late release that leaves the face open through impact, resulting in wide right push. On occasions where he's able to manipulate the face ahead of impact, he gets the "rattlesnake in your pocket:" a pull-hook. And of course his head movement/loss of spine angle is so extreme that he even chunked a few drives in 2015. 

TW doesn't need a complete swing overhaul. Proceeding from the perspective that his driver issues aren't solely mental, making minor adjustments and ingraining them on the practice range is all the golfer needs, not a shift to another swing paradigm.   

This, or teeing the ball up three inches outside of his left foot ought to do the trick. (Not a serious suggestion.)

Stats via PGATour.com