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Perhaps you have Sunday afternoon plans on this late February day. Maybe you have a family and would like to see them and spend time with them and go out into the world exploring with them. Or maybe where you are, the weather is starting to turn, or improve, or just stay gorgeous, so you want to get outside and actually do things with your life.
I’m going to argue against it on this Sunday because Tiger Woods is back and he’s playing some fascinating, exciting, eyebrow-raising golf. It’s not perfect and it’s not going to win this week’s Honda Classic. But it’s entertaining as hell to watch right now.
There are a few reasons this comeback has looked so different from the prior failed attempts. It all originates with the different surgery Tiger had — a fusion as opposed to the microdiscectomies. The pain, we are told, is gone. He’s swinging with astonishing speed and power. It’s the kind of speed that just wasn’t there before and was never expected again, regardless of health, at 42 years old. Even Brandel Chamblee said on Saturday that he thinks this is the best Tiger has swung, he thought, since 2001, and that was the stretch of the greatest golf every played. So yeah, Tiger has looked different this time around.
But this week at Honda has been more about the speed and power. He’s also making actual golf shots again — relying on feel and imagination and stuffing it close to the pin time after time. That had been lost in recent years, even when he was healthy. Tiger’s proximity to the hole numbers are among the best in this week’s group at PGA National. It’s how it has looked, too, with Tiger working the ball both ways, hitting moonballs into the sky, low burners, sawed off wedges, and some nifty touch chips around the greens.
This is so much more fun to watch than those depressing slogs in recent years. It’s a very different look and now he’s tied for 11th with 18 holes to play at PGA National.
At seven shots back, Tiger is probably not going to win, but at least he’s playing late in the day on a Sunday of a damn PGA Tour event. It’s beyond the tempered expectations we’ve had for him in this latest comeback, and may result in rising expectations as Augusta bears down on the schedule. And you should watch it. It will probably be a couple weeks before Tiger plays again on Tour, and given what we saw Saturday, this final round will be worth the time.
Tiger tees off at 12:45 p.m. ET so almost his entire round will fall within the coverage windows on Golf Channel and CBS. That first hole will almost certainly be shown during live look-in coverage on Golf Channel’s pregame show. And all of the coverage will be simulcast streamed throughout the afternoon. Here’s your media schedule for Sunday’s final round at the Honda Classic:
Sunday’s final round coverage
Television:
1 to 2:45 p.m. ET — Golf Channel
3 to 6 p.m. ET — CBS
Online streams:
9 a.m. to 6 p.m. ET — PGA Tour Live
- 9 a.m. — Featured groups — Rory McIlroy / Chris Kirk
- 1 p.m. — Featured holes — par-5 3rd, par-3 15th, par-3 17th
1 to 2:45 p.m. ET — Golf Channel LiveExtra simulcast stream
3 to 6 p.m. ET — PGATour.com/CBS simulcast stream
Radio:
1 to 6 p.m. ET — PGA Tour Radio on Sirius-XM (Ch. 92/208 and streamed here)