Tiger Woods Set to Return to Golf

Tiger Woods is finally com­ing back to golf this week at the WGC-Bridgestone Invi­ta­tional in Akron, Ohio.  He has only played 9 holes of com­pet­i­tive golf this sea­son and nobody knows which Tiger is going to show up.  See­ing as though he report­edly hasn’t even prac­ticed, I can’t imag­ine it’s going to be the Tiger of old.

Tiger has been through a lot in the past two years, all of which has been his own stu­pid­ity.  Between his “sex scan­dal,” his very expen­sive divorce, and the injury to his leg, I see this return being more of a pub­lic­ity stunt then an actual attempt to com­pete.  Tiger is only com­ing back to the course to make an ill-fated attempt to prove his crit­ics wrong.  He has fallen to his low­est world rank­ing since 1997 and to him that is unacceptable.

To his credit, he returns in a weird sort of win-win sit­u­a­tion.  If he suc­ceeds and has an out­stand­ing per­for­mance, he will rub his achieve­ments in the faces of his nay-sayers.  If he strug­gles and puts on a pathetic show, he’ll blame it on his leg not being fully recov­ered and dis­ap­pear from the PGA Tour for the rest of the sea­son and retreat to his $55 Mil­lion dol­lar estate in Florida.  Either way, in Tiger’s mind he can’t lose with this attempt.

Please vote in my poll on where you think Tiger Woods will fin­ish in the WGC-Bridgestone Invi­ta­tional this com­ing week­end August 3–7, 2011.