Tiger's tooth is back, and so is his sense of humor
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. – Tiger Woods' lost dominance may never return. His vanished tooth, though, is back. And so is his sense of humor.
Woods finished his nine-hole practice round at the TPC course here early Tuesday morning and met the media with a weapon as rare as his recent tournament appearances: zingers.
Tiger explained that he was at girlfriend Lindsey Vonn's recent ski race wearing a skeleton mask "so no one knew who I was, trying to blend in, because there's not a lot of brown dudes at ski races."
As for the missing tooth, which would probably be the most overcooked media story this week if not for deflate-gate, Woods insisted a cameraman did indeed hit him after the race and knocked it loose.
"Dude with a video camera on his shoulder, right in front of me, kneeling, stood up and turned and caught me square on the mouth. He chipped that one, cracked the other one," he explained. "And so then, you know, I'm trying to keep this thing so that blood is not all over the place, and luckily he hit the one I had the root canal on.”
Woods kept the light vibe during a follow-up.
"Oh Jesus, the flight home was a joke," he said. "I couldn't eat, couldn't drink until [the dentist] fixed them. I couldn't have anything touch it. Even breathing hurt, because any kind of air over the nerve, the tooth that was still alive, was cracked."
The fact that there is no photographic proof of this incident is curious. There was no picture of Woods covering his mouth, stanching the blood, or doing anything except watching Vonn win with a hole in his mouth and a mask on his face (which he credits to his love of Ghost Recon). You'd think someone with a cell phone would have snapped a shot of the most famous golfer in history getting a Chiclet knocked out.
Asked why he thought people aren't buying the story, Woods simply said, "It is just what it is."
The problem Woods faces isn't that people doubt his tooth story; it's that people doubt him. The scrutiny about what he might be hiding hasn't abated since his marriage fell apart, and it hasn't been helped by his secrecy and occasional boorishness. Woods' odd and over-the-top reaction to a Dan Jenkins satire late in 2014 was another example of a molehill becoming a mountain because he's so closed off from the public.
Tiger's ability on Tuesday to avoid being ruthless about being toothless is a much better look.
For years now his game has been overshadowed by his personal travails, and that's sort of a shame. Woods has eight PGA Tour wins since 2012, which is more than any other golfer, and yet that seems almost improbable looking back at several years of injuries and intrigue.
He is still capable of taking over the golf world and the media cycle with one terrific round – something he might do Thursday here at the Waste Management Phoenix Open in what will be his first competitive round since finishing last in his own charity tournament in December – but for now he's lost the stage to the behemoth that is the NFL.
Tiger will turn 40 later this year, and the debate about his next major championship has long since drifted from when toward if. And still we watch and follow, right down to the details of his dental work, because he's still captivating. Anyone who needed a reminder of that got one Tuesday when he launched into a story about when he came to this course in 1997 and the fans were so awed and amped by him that a scene straight out of a frat party erupted … at a golf tournament.
"Just smelling and hearing the beer behind me on the tee box,” Woods said, flashing that famous [and intact] grin. "To turn around and see all this beer flying was crazy."
Everyone wants that zaniness back again. Everyone.
Woods doesn't have to be jovial for his fans and the golf world to get that crazy again.
But for now, as we wait to see if he can reclaim that old magic, it sure wouldn't hurt.
