Woods Is at Home on Range

Tiger Woods rolled in a short putt for par on the last hole and then took off for the one place he needed to be. No, not the lunch room. The driving range.

If Riviera is indeed going to be where Woods wins his first tournament this year, then maybe he chose the right location to start. After he opened with an even-par round of 71, Woods is already five shots back. Chances are if Tiger has another day like Thursday, he may be forced to do something drastic, such as move up to the white tees.

Nobody outworks Woods, whose devotion to practice is almost scary. There were two wire baskets of golf balls waiting for him at the range as he walked briskly over.

Fans peeked through the chain-link fence to watch Tiger, and because this is his office, Woods was all business.

He did not smile. He did not chat. He looked straight ahead, grabbed a club and started pounding golf balls, arcing them toward his targets at the far end of the range.

You get the idea that Woods would keep practicing until he wore the grooves off the heads of his irons. He would hit golf balls until someone discovered the next metal to replace titanium. They would name it Woodoleum.

Tiger would continue to hit golf balls and work. You understand this is what he needs to do right now, because he knows he isn’t playing very well.

Tiger didn’t even win his threesome on opening day at the Nissan Open. Former high school hockey star Tom Scherrer had five strokes on him. He’s a nice player, but Scherrer knows more about a two-line pass than winning golf tournaments. He has won once in his career. Woods has won 24, but none this year.

According to Tiger, he knows what his problems are. Even better, he knows how to fix them. For the benefit of reporters, Woods took a few moments to list the corrections he needs to make, just before he headed for the range.

Hold the hips.

Speed up the arms.

Arc off the plane.

Loft the left wrist.

Who is he kidding? What is Tiger trying to do to, the Macarena?

However he tries to do it, Tiger believes his swing will be just fine once he manages to fine-tune it.

He says he didn’t get the ball close enough to the hole to make many birdies, but he says he drove it well. Woods ditched the driver he used to shoot 17 under at Torrey Pines and went back to the one he used to shoot eight under at Pebble Beach.

And if that doesn’t make sense to you, it doesn’t matter, because it does to Woods.

He wants to work the golf ball, to shape his shots, which he says is easier for him to do with the old driver.

So Woods had no complaints about his driving, only about the way he hit the ball, plus his chipping and putting. On the bright side, you half expected him to say he was relieved his sweater didn’t chafe his neck.

It’s worse than we thought, this Tiger “slump” thing. Or maybe not.

Tiger’s scores in relation to par compare favorably to the top two players so far this year, Phil Mickelson and Davis Love III. Woods is a combined 50 under in 17 rounds, Love is 51 under in 17 rounds, and Mickelson is a combined 32 under in 15 rounds.

But Love won at Pebble Beach and Mickelson was second, then Mickelson won at Torrey Pines and Love tied for second. Meanwhile, Tiger is busy holding the hips and speeding up the arms.

If anyone has been paying attention to Woods, he can turn it around in a hurry. It’s not as if he can’t come back from five shots with 54 holes left. He made up seven shots in the last seven holes to win at Pebble Beach last year.

Of course, Woods said that was luck. But it usually isn’t a good idea to depend on luck this time, which explains why Woods was hard at work pounding golf balls on the range at Riviera.

A three-birdie, three-bogey round isn’t up to Tiger’s standards. He said he played hard, at least, and kept grinding, but it just didn’t work out. Just one of those days, he said.

There have been plenty of those kinds of days for Woods so far this year, which is why he is working so hard to put an end to them.

As Tiger is fond of saying, he’s not that far away.

Tiger says he is just going to do his best, try to put himself in position Sunday and see what happens. If he does that, the victory that Woods has been looking for could only be getting closer.

Standing there hitting the golf balls that spilled out from those wire buckets, Woods hopes it’s in range.