The good news for Tiger Woods as his countdown to his return to golf on Thursday is that he cannot be as bad as he was in the same event last year. Never has the previous world number one looked so at odds with his game and himself as he did in concluding joint 78th out of 80 at the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational in Akron 12 months ago.
This time there are only 76 players in what will be his first contest since he limped out of the Players Championship after nine painful holes in mid-May. Having missed both the US Open and The Open to rest his injured left knee and Achilles ligament, Woods has drop to an almost incredible 28th on the rankings.
But the most imperative thing to him is that he says he feels improved than he has done for years. After nine holes of practice on Tuesday on the Firestone course where he won seven out of nine times before last Augusts nightmare - it came as his separation was being substantiate - the 14 major winner tried to give the emotion of being a new man.
He needs to be - his last triumph was November 2009, his last major win June 2008 and, having fired caddie Steve Williams for supposed unfaithfulness, he is looking for to make a fresh start. I'm good to go, said Woods, who will partner Open champion Darren Clarke in the first round.The docs gave me the agreement, so here I am.
I started practicing a couple of weeks ago, which was nice, and I was close to playing last week, but again the doctors advised me that maybe I should take another week.I started imminent it pretty hard and I feel good now.The great thing is I don't feel a thing - it feels solid, it feels stable, no pain.
That's one of the reasons why I took as long as I did to come back. I want to get to this point where I can go ahead and start playing golf again like this.It's been a very long time and it feels good to go out there today and hit balls and feel not anything and pretty much do anything I want on the golf route.Asked if there was any rust in his game to take absent he replied: I really didn't feel any.