Additional tournament time will fix Tiger's issues

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Tiger Woods finished in the top 10 at THE PLAYERS Championship despite hitting only half of the fairways.

I think Tiger might get more bad advice than a new mother who just graduated from college. If she won the lottery the next day, she might come close, but she wouldn't catch Tiger. The funny thing about advice is how easy it is to dispense. It runs on the same stream with opinions and assumptions. And if you listen to very much of it you will find yourself up that creek without a paddle.

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So far, I haven't given Tiger any advice. Then it occurred to me that he just may read what I have written, take my advice and I could cash in on it. I missed the era of enormous purses that he ushered in a decade ago. Actually I was there -- I just couldn't make many cuts. Certainly I am not the first to think of riding Tiger's coat tails out of relative poverty. Maybe I am the most brazen about it, but then again, I am uniquely qualified to help here.

Few have ever taken the easy life of playing the PGA TOUR and made it as hard as I did. Not that I have a patent on tripping over the top step of success, but I certainly have more than my fair share of experience. Every player knows what it is like to struggle from time to time. Every player knows about trying to live up to expectations. Tiger may be one of the few people who know what it is like for others to have higher expectations than you have for yourself.

He is simply expected to win every week that he plays. Any week that he doesn't we are somehow let down. If you listen too closely to the tone of the stories about Tiger after THE PLAYERS Championship it is amazing that the sun managed to crest the eastern horizon last Monday morning. How did the game ever survive without Tiger?

Let's get a few things straight before I dazzle Tiger with my insight and cleverness. First, he is hitting a block, not a hook. Sure, he hooks it on occasion but that is a reaction, not a symptom. He and Hank Haney have a plan, and they will work it out. Hank and Tiger both said that he was pure on the driving range but is having trouble taking it to the golf course. This brings me to my first piece of advice.

We don't want you to be human so stop admitting to human error. You won the U.S. Open on a broken leg that most of us couldn't have used to walk to the bathroom. You are Superman and Ben Hogan all rolled up into one. We don't need Clark Kent.

What is amazing about the world's No. 1 player is how much better he is today than he has ever been in his career. If he had hit it the way that he did at THE PLAYERS Championship a few years ago he probably would have spent the weekend on a slow cruise down the Intercoastal Waterway on his boat. Instead, he backed into the final group on Sunday and slashed his way to his first top-10 finish there in years.

Some say that Tiger is not tournament-ready yet, even though he is in contention every week he tees it up and he won two starts ago. On this point, I tend to agree. Playing tournament golf can't be replicated on the driving range or your home course. There is only one way to get your sea legs, and that is to test the water. That is why I think that Tiger should be playing this week in Dallas.

That is my real piece of advice. Add a couple of tournaments to your schedule. Dallas would have been a good fit. The renovations to the course are good and you don't have to play Cottonwood anymore. You have won there and finished 12th or better seven times. Sure, you missed the cut there in 2005, but that was a tough year all the way around.

Making this suggestion after the commitment deadline may seem like a cop-out -- but so what? Andrew Jackson won the Battle of New Orleans and got elected President on those merits. What tends to be omitted from the ledger far too often is that the War of 1812 had been over for a month when he turned back the British Fleet and reclaimed the Big Easy. I wonder whose advice old Andrew was listening to at that time?

So Tiger won't be in Dallas this week for the HP Byron Nelson Championship. His next expected start is the Memorial Tournament two weeks before he defends his U.S. Open crown at Bethpage, where he won in 2002. I would love to see him tee it up somewhere else between now and then. I think that he would benefit greatly from a few more reps on the course before he once again tries to take a step closer to history.

What I find most ironic is that people who have never hit a quality golf shot feel free to question Tiger's technique and critique his swing. His decision-making and course management have all been analyzed and questioned. But my suggestion to the world's No. 1 player is to just play -- and if you have a few hours to kill before you tee off you might want to read your resume before you go. It is pretty good and guarantees that you will never be up that creek. Most of us could buy a paddle if we needed to, you can buy the creek and turn it into a hazard on a great par 4.

John Maginnes is a columnist for PGATOUR.COM. His views do not necessarily represent the views of the PGA TOUR.