Exclusive Sign Up Offer - Join Golfshake free today & get 30 days free Premium access plus £5 off your next tee time booking with Teeofftimes.co.uk

Tiger Woods Looks for Returned Success at AT&T Pebble Beach Pro Am

Posted by: Darren Ramowski on Fri 10 Feb 2012

Comments ()

Guest post from Jim Dowd of The Urban Golfer.

For more information check out the Urban Golfer for golf news and PGA tour news via www.theurbangolfer.net

Yesterday, Tiger Woods began his 2012 PGA campaign at the AT&T Pro-Am at Pebble Beach. His performance a couple weeks ago in Abu Dhabi answered some questions regarding is game and whether “he is back”, but also posed a few more. Can he put four rounds together? Can he close like the Tiger of old?

It is a bit ironic that he is paired up with Tony Romo as his amateur partner for the next few days. Romo, the Dallas Cowboys quarterback, has been criticized for his inability to put a full productive season together. Almost every NFL season, Romo gets the Cowboys off to a fast start, leading the NFC East, becoming a mid-season Super Bowl favorite. Then November arrives, and the Cowboys and their fans endure their annual late-season swoon. They lose games that they shouldn’t, limp in to the playoffs (if they make it), and get beat early. America gets to enjoy FOX’s footage of Jerry Jones’ in such pain and anguish, that even his surgically prodded and pulled face cannot hide.

Since Y.E. Yang outplayed Tiger at Hazeltine to win the PGA Championship, Tiger has been a lot more Cowboys than, well Tiger of old. Will we ever see the 2000 US Open Tiger or 1997 Tiger again, I doubt it. But I certainly hope we won’t be getting a Tiger that gets outplayed by the likes of Robert Rock in the final group on a Sunday.

Closing is not easy, and that could not be any better exemplified by the past two Sundays on the PGA Tour. Both Kyle Stanley and Spencer Levin could not hold seven and six-stroke leads respectively. These types of Saturday night leads were commonplace for Tiger, leading to a Sunday victory stroll; a “what appeared to be easy” final round 72 and a hug from Stevie to conclude the tournament. If Tiger is not going to build leads like these, he is going to have to find a way to close. That means going low and intimidating his playing partners with his play and not his black pants and red shirt.

Tiger has great memories at Pebble and the setting will be incredible in Monterrey as he makes his return to the AT&T for the first time in ten years. For Tiger, this is another critical week and significant step in becoming his old self. This will be as good of a look of where he has been and where Tiger and his game plan on going. While playing with Romo will make the Tiger galleries even more crowded, I doubt the Cowboys quarterback can offer much closing advice… too bad Eli Manning isn’t available.

Jim Dowd

Urban Golfer

For more information check out the Urban Golfer for golf news and PGA tour news via www.theurbangolfer.net