Tiger Woods shows signs of old self in practice round

A funny thing happened at 4:25 p.m. on an overcast Monday afternoon at Augusta National.

It felt a lot more like 2:30 p.m. on a Sunday – in 2001.

Tiger Woods stepped to the first tee with his oldest tour pal, Mark O’Meara. Crowds were teeming around the first tee box and lining both sides of the fairway to the green to watch the 111th-ranked golfer in the world practice with a guy who hasn’t made a Masters cut since 2005.

Woods pulled his usual drive into the adjacent ninth fairway and everybody wondered what level of hell might ensue.

Then came a glimpse of the old magic that forced everyone to keep repeating that Allen Iverson refrain, “Are we talking about practice? PRACTICE?”

It’s only Monday – but still, this was the opposite of what anyone expected to see from the guy whose last completed round was a career-worst 82 in Phoenix.

The short birdie on the first from the ninth fairway was one thing.

The casually three-putted eagle opportunity on No. 2 wasn’t out of the norm.

The flip wedge to inside 3 feet after a bombed drive to the foot of the bank fronting the third green raised some eyebrows.

But it was the fourth hole that quickened everyone’s pulse – including Woods’. After O’Meara raised a cheer with a fairway wood “as good as I can hit it” 10 feet left of the pin over the bunker, Woods delivered a 3-iron to kick-in range of the hole that drew a rare Monday roar.

O’Meara laughed and Woods shot back “some things never change” with a hearty smile that’s been missing from his play for too long.

Woods played 11 holes and his front nine could have been 30.

Ahem.

“It’s been a process, but I’m on the good side now,” Woods said. “It’s progression. I felt like I had to get my game into a spot where I could compete to win a golf tournament and it’s finally there.”

Perhaps – just perhaps – instead of writing Woods off as a lost cause this week coming off a two-month rebuilding sabbatical, he might be penciled in amongst the dozen or so guys expected to contend.

“Never underestimate Tiger Woods,” O’Meara said. “He has a great passion.

“When you live under the scrutiny that he’s lived under, to be a little bit off and to struggle a little bit, sometimes in life it’s not bad to struggle a little bit. In the long run, I think sometimes it makes you better. I think he’s fired up and I think he’s got some good years ahead of him. Whether it’s this week or down the road, I think he’s going to be fine. I really do.”

Not 15 minutes before Woods emerged from the clubhouse to head for the course – causing patrons who were ready to leave to start scurrying back in place to watch – major champions Geoff Ogilvy and Padraig Harrington were chatting about the post-Tiger landscape and how golf has entered a dominance by committee era.

“The golf world is pretty interesting at the moment,” said Ogilvy, the 2006 U.S. Open champion. “I mean, there’s a lot of guys who would rightly be in the real conversation – Rory (McIlroy), Dustin (Johnson), Jordan (Spieth), Adam (Scott), Jason (Day) and Phil (Mickelson), really, started playing better last week. Bubba (Watson) is always one of the clear favorites here. We’ve gone so long – my whole career or life there’s been one out-and-out and beyond favorite in this tournament every year. Now there’s like six or seven guys. You kind of throw a blanket over them. … There hasn’t been parity amongst the favorites like this for a while.

“And it’s not one of those cases where we don’t have that outstanding player. We’ve just got seven or eight outstanding players. They’re all incredible. Golf is in an amazingly good spot. And if Tiger plays like he can, he’s going to be one of the favorites. If he plays like he can … That adds intrigue to the story, too. This has to be one of the best buildups to any tournament ever.”

Harrington, who won three majors in 2007-08, agrees with Ogilvy – to a point.

“At the moment we have a lot of really, really talented players,” he said. “There’s several guys here this week who are thrilled that all the attention is on Rory getting the Grand Slam and Tiger coming back. There’s lots of guys who are getting under the radar this week much easier than they ever would have. There’s a lot of stories, but that’s because the story that Tiger’s telling right now is a different story.”

Harrington called Woods “an outlier. He was not the norm at all.” But Harrington believes the game was better with such a consistent force at the top.

“For you guys in the media, it’s a lot easier to sell one player when you know he’s going to be in contention at the end of the week,” Harring­ton said. “That’s what we’re missing. It’s a big miss. If you look at TV ratings, it’s because we can’t predict who’s going to win the tournament. When Tiger was around, you could pretty much guarantee that he was going to be there at the end of the week. It’s not easy to find a person to do that.”

For one evening, at least, as the sun went down, it felt familiar. It felt like – just perhaps – that outlier the game has lost was found. It even looked like Woods was having fun, even offering two fist bumps and a high five to patrons lined up outside the ropes as he went to the ninth tee.

Woods must put his reclaimed swagger and short game to the ultimate test in competition against a field more stacked than ever.

But maybe the clock turned back just a little on a Mon­day unlike any other.