Tiger finds his flexibility

Usually, Tiger Woods waits until Thursday to put on a show at the Masters.

This time he started early. The biggest name in golf and its all-time money leader is back from a two-month break to fix his game and looking less like the corporation he was during his most dominant days and more like just one of the guys on the PGA Tour.

Woods, 39 and more than $110 million richer in prize money alone from the sport, has flashed a lot of smiles here this week. On Tuesday during his practice range time, he chatted with his small children and bounced along while listening to his 300-plus song, hip-hop playlist.

“I wanted to just rock out,” Woods said. “That’s what I practice in at home, and so having an opportunity to do that here, you see a lot of guys do it.”

Woods seemingly never wanted to be like “a lot of guys,” though. On Wednesday, he played his first Par 3 Contest here since 2004.

A golf writer asked him this on Tuesday: “There’s an observation that you just seem looser. Do you agree?”

He replied: “Yeah, I’m a lot more flexible, you’re right.” With a smile.

“I’m just enjoying just competing again,” he said when asked to elaborate. “Whether I have blinders on or not, I don’t feel any different. I feel like I’m preparing to try and win the Masters.”

Augusta National can make anyone feel like a kid again, defending champion Bubba Watson said.

“This place brings it out in you,” he said. “The older champions, the veterans, they get excited around here. That’s why everybody comes back. They want to be a part of this. It energizes them. I think that Tiger has taken enough time off to where he wants to be back and, obviously, he’s pretty good around this place, so he is excited.”

The Masters will be Woods’ first tournament since he walked off the course midway through the first round at the Farmers Insurance Open on Feb. 5, citing a back injury. The previous week, he missed the cut at the Waste Management Phoenix Open after shooting an 82 on Friday, his highest round as a professional.

“Was I concerned for him? I mean, not really. It’s hard to be concerned for someone that’s already won 14 (majors) and 80 PGA TOUR events and earned over a billion dollars in his career. I think he’s done OK,” current world No. 1 Rory McIlroy said.

“It would have been a bad thing for the sport if he had not been able to come back, so it’s great that he’s making his first start back here. And, hopefully, this is the start of a period where he can play continuously and have a good run at it, because, you know, he’s 39, turning 40 this year. He’s got maybe a few years left where he can play at the top level, and he’s going to give it his all.”

Woods wanted to come back for the Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill in late March, but his game was not ready by that point, he said. It is now, and he would not have returned for the Masters if it was not, he added.

“I worked my (behind) off,” Woods said. “That’s the easiest way to kind of describe it. I worked hard. People would never understand how much work I put into it to come back and do this again. It was sunup to sundown.”

Woods has talked a lot this week about “release points” and how the fact that he was stuck between two different ones was wrecking his game, particularly a short game that didn’t look ready for prime time when he played his last competitive golf.

“I just needed to make sure that I got into the release pattern that we wanted to get into, and once I did, then I just had to hammer it out and make sure it was engrained,” he said.

It is now, and he thinks he’s ready to compete for a fifth green jacket despite being ranked No. 111 in the world.

“I want to win,” he said. “The whole idea is to prepare and do that, and I feel like my game is finally ready to go and do that again.”

This story was originally published April 8, 2015 at 10:38 PM with the headline "Tiger finds his flexibility."