Older Tiger Woods hopes to recapture past form at Masters

Tiger Woods is getting old. Just ask him.

“I’m feeling older, there’s no doubt about that,” the 39-year-old four-time Masters Tour­na­ment champion said Tuesday at Augusta National Golf Club.

After his second practice round, Woods talked about his kids (who will caddie for him today in his first Par-3 Contest since 2004), old cassette tapes and early CD players (he once glued a portable CD player to a cassette holder so he could listen to his music while he practiced), and how he won his second tournament with a persimmon driver.

“I won the Masters when Jor­dan (Spieth) was in diapers,” Woods said.

Has Woods gone into a “good old days” state of mind?

He hasn’t won a major since 2008, hasn’t won a Masters since 2005 and hasn’t won a tournament since the summer of 2013. He’s had injuries, three swing gurus and personal strife played out in the tabloids since he last won at Augusta Na­tional.

Woods enters his 20th Mas­ters with more question marks than at any time in the past, including the big one: Why is he even here?

Take your pick of Woods’ laundry list of woes: his back, his knee, his chipping, his putting, his choice of swing coaches, his habit of changing swings and whether he can even make the cut 67 days after he shot 82 in the second round at Scottsdale.

He once made 142 cuts in a row, smashing the PGA Tour record of 113 by Byron Nelson. In the past two years, Woods has either missed the cut or withdrawn in nine of 12 starts.

But no one is writing him off, least of all his fellow players.

Defending champion Bub­ba Watson said Augusta Na­tional has a way of “energizing” players.

“This place brings it out in you,” he said. “I think Tiger has taken enough time off to where he wants to be back. Obviously, he’s pretty good around this place.”

Woods didn’t say he had the answers. But he came close, on the basis of the long hours on the practice area at his Jupiter, Fla., home since the last time he teed the ball up in a tournament nine weeks ago.

“We’ve spent a lot of time, a lot of work on this,” he said. “It’s finally paid off. I worked my (tail) off. That’s the easiest way to kind of describe it. I worked hard.”

Was there one shot or one chip during a secluded practice session that set off a tuning fork?

“There was really no moment like that,” he said. “It was a slow and steady progression each and every day. By the time the sun set, I should be a better player than I was in the morning. We don’t need to make big giant leaps or anything like that. Just incrementally get better.”

He said that the time was right and that he would have played this week even if it wasn’t the Masters. Woods also said he would not have played the Masters if he believed he needed more work.

“I wanted to be back for Ar­nold’s event,” he said of the Arnold Palmer Invitational in Orlando last month. “I love that event. I love Arnold to death and what he’s meant to me and my life. I just wasn’t ready.”