Tiger Woods talking a good game ahead of Players Championship

It may look unlikely at present, but Tiger Woods insists he’ll get back to his best as he prepares to tee it up at the Players Championship.

The big beast looked tame at the Masters last month, where he finished a disappointing tied 40th. But that was positively brilliant compared to last week’s missed cut at Quail Hollow.

It was only the eighth time he’s failed to make the weekend of a tournament and underlines Woods is a long way off reaching the heights of old.

Not only that but the former world No.1 has been petulant on the fairways and terse and tetchy off them - it all adding up to the impression that his best days are now well and truly behind him.

However, that’s not what Woods thinks as he gets set to try and win his second ‘fifth Major’ this week.

“You’re not going to play well every week,” the current world No.7 said.

“There are times when I have felt awful over a golf ball and I’ve still somehow won a golf tournament.

“It doesn’t mean I feel comfortable but just somehow figured out a way.” For Woods, the man who once made the game look easy, discomfort is now the goal as he tries to perfect the lessons learned after hours spent with swing coach Sean Foley.

“When I get into what Sean wants me to do with my old set-up where I’m comfortable, then I can hit an array of shots, because obviously my grip has changed, my posture and how I move through the golf ball is completely different. So that’s where I get into the problems,” he added.

Many Woods observers, former coach Butch Harmon among them, think he should stop talking this ‘mumbo jumbo’ and simply get back to hitting balls the way he used to, claiming his over-analysing the game is killing any chances of success.

On the probability of him winning this weekend, Woods added: “It’s either I’ve done really well or I haven’t.

“I think that’s the nature of this course, though. When you’re off on this course you’re going to get penalised pretty severely, but when you’re on, this golf course seems pretty easy because all the balls tend to funnel towards flags.

“You can kind of feed off these slopes and get it in there tight.”