#1 Is Back

Tiger Woods has decided that he is ready to return to the links. He announced today that he will play in next week’s WGC-Accenture Match Play Championship in Arizona.

This is great news for golf in general. Since Tiger was out with his knee surgery and rehab, ratings have dropped significantly. Tiger’s domination makes people want to watch. So it’s nice to see him ready to continue his reign on top of the golf world.

Tiger coming back to play match play is a good decision. Because he hasn’t played in eight months, match play is not quite as demanding as stroke play. (For golf rookies, match play is when two players square off and whoever shoots a lower score on the hole wins it. Players still play all 18 holes, unless a winner can be decided before that because they are up by more than there are holes remaining. If you win a hole by two or three shots, you only get one point—you win that hole.) This isn’t as demanding to Tiger because if he struggles on one hole, he can lose only one point and fix his problem on the next hole. He won’t be fighting against an entire field of players while keeping his score as low as possible. He will only be going against one other golfer so it won’t be too mentally and physically draining.

Either way, I hope Tiger does well because I, like many golf fans, want to see Tiger return to his dominant self. It will be nice to see him out on the golf course again sporting that legendary Sunday red shirt when he really turns up his game. It’s once again time for Tiger to shatter more records.