Tiger's Back At 8:12 ET Thursday...

Tiger tees off at 8:12 ET Thursday with Jordan Spieth and Jason Day in The Quickie. Writers will be Tweeting his round, without violating the rights of PGA Tour right holders by Tweeting play-by-play that the rightsholders are not showing. The sport within the sport!

Assessments of his pro-am round were mostly positive. Doug Ferguson writing for the AP:

He started Wednesday with a pro-am round that was not inspiring except that he showed no indication of pain or any other physical setback. He started by hitting a tee shot on the par-3 10th hole off the bank and into the water. His drive off the 11th hole went right into the hazard.

But it was just a pro-am round, which doesn't mean much. Woods once had beautiful control of his golf ball during a practice round Wednesday at Winged Foot during the 2006 U.S. Open, and he went on to miss the cut for the first time in a major.

"I hit some loose shots today, but I also hit some really good ones," Woods said. "Back feels great, which is a really good sign."

Barry Svrluga noted his rusty beginning but overall positive performance.

He did, though, show frustration when shots went astray. After an errant tee shot at No. 8 – his 17th hole of the day – Woods grimaced and thumped his clubhead into the ground. But he said that even with Congressional’s thick rough, he didn’t have a problem aggressively attacking shots that didn’t find the fairway.

“I went for it today, just to test it and make sure,” Woods said, “and made some pretty good ones, too.”

Helen Ross at PGATour.com writes:

Woods planned to get treatment on his back after the pro-am. As the tournament host, he also had some functions to attend prior to concentrating on the first round.

For what it's worth, a witness to Woods at those post-round functions offered this:

I watched as he sat in a chair for 30 mins for the opening ceremony, immediately off the course from his practice round. When it was his turn to stand up, he labored to stretch and stand and then almost had a limp as he walked to sit back down.

Of course, that could describe most of us after sitting for 30 minutes listening to corporatespeak!

Farrell Evans added this at ESPN.com:

Not surprisingly, Tiger struggled with his driver, a club that has plagued him, perhaps, more than any other the past few years. He hit just two of his first seven fairways, missing mostly to the right.

"My grip got a little bit weak," said Woods, who spent last week with instructor Sean Foley trying to strengthen his grip. "That's one of the reasons I was losing the ball to the right."
At other times, Tiger's approach shots and short game looked sharp.

In Golf World this week, Jaime Diaz assessed Tiger's return and offered this reminder.

Woods is 38, six years removed from his last major victory, and coming off back surgery to relieve a pinched nerve. Even if he were to again climb to No. 1, it wouldn't be with the breathtaking power that marked his prime but with a more professional precision. With much less margin for error, some skeptics -- who also wonder if his appearance at Congressional is really about being a tournament host needing to appease a new sponsor -- question whether Woods has the energy needed to assault the mountain yet again.

All legitimate points. But another that is rarely mentioned -- and could negate them all -- is the state of Woods' most important asset: his mind. No doubt it was in a jumble post-scandal, and my own theory is that Tiger's refusal to depart from the worn-out litany of "reps," "feels" and other jargon when he deigns to discuss his game is designed to avoid addressing the real issue: what's going on between his ears. As a result, a bunch of baggage -- some of it very heavy -- has lingered.