"In short, we still don't know if Tiger will really be back. But Australia gave us some strong evidence that he is finally feeling accepted."

I rarely disagree with my colleague Jaime Diaz, but in the case of his Golf World column on what Royal Melbourne proved about Woods game, I don't agree.

The Royal Melbourne Composite course may have been a beast, but it played to Woods' strength. For all the hosannas raised to the Alister Mackenzie masterpiece, at less than 7,000 yards, to hold up, it had to be tricked up. Only carefully crafted and supremely struck iron shots were well received by the rock-hard and crazy-fast greens, and Woods can still hit more of those than anyone. What the layout didn't require was the driver, and that's the club that will tell where Woods really is with his swing. Finally, Woods got a relatively easy singles draw against Aaron Baddeley, who was shaky after his Calcavecchian miss off the 18th tee on the opening day set a negative tone for his team.

In short, we still don't know if Tiger will really be back. But Australia gave us some strong evidence that he is finally feeling accepted.

Other than some silly rough, I don't think Royal Melbourne was tricked up. As I noted in my story for the same issue of Golf World (not posted), the PGA Tour staff did a super job backing off the pedal to ensure that the course was not tricked up during Friday's potentially Shinnecockian day.

Furthermore, the conditions were major-championship-like in terms of crowd presence and speed of the golf course, making the kind of golf Woods and several others displayed pretty telling about the level of one's game.

Now, as for the driver issue, it is true that Woods didn't have to hit a lot of drivers. But a quick look at the 2012 major schedule will show that the driver will not be an important club at two and perhaps three of the venues. Stingers will be a golfer's friend in 2012, which bodes well for Tiger.