Woods' new shot repertoire should suit tough new venue

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Tiger Woods shows off his new and improved swing at this year's new Accenture Match Play Championship course.

MARANA, Ariz. -- All the practice rounds in the world can't come close to what it will feel like for Tiger Woods when he tees it up for the first time in 254 days in the opening round of the World Golf Championships-Accenture Match Play Championship Wednesday at the Ritz-Carlton Golf Club.

It's why the greatest player on the planet sought the advice and insight of athletes from other sports who have returned from their own respective injuries. There's ready and there's tournament ready and not even Woods will know exactly where his game is until he hits that first tee shot tomorrow.

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"You need to find rhythm quickly and get into the flow," Woods said. "I think match play helps that because it is basically like playing the final round of a tournament from the very first hole each and every match."

One way to find that rhythm is with the short game, something that Woods was able to practice perhaps more than any other part of his game, at least in the early stages of rehab, because that's all he was physically able to do. "I got really good at hitting a 5-iron 100 yards," Woods joked.

Perhaps there's some seriousness to that, however. The fairways are football-field wide here at the Ritz-Carlton Golf Club, but its greens will require a lot of short-game attention, given their quirky angles and severe slopes.

Someone might shoot 64 or 65 here, as Padraig Harrington suggested, but when the PGA TOUR's resident short-game gurus start talking about all the different types of shots they'll need to employ, it's worth listening.

"From what I can tell, it is very severe and will require some interesting shots, bump-and-runs, flops, spinning shots," Phil Mickelson said.

"The greens have so much pitch on them, so much slope and movement, that there aren't a lot of pins that you can go to," added Woods. "The speeds are down because if they ever got them up, you couldn't play."

What does play, however, is the undeniable fact that the tougher the set-up, the tougher things are for the rest of the field trying to beat you know who.

And while time away from the game might have been a blessing in disguise for Papa Woods, who admitted that he didn't realize how much he loved being at home, the injury might have been a blessing in some ways, too.

An eight-month layoff can do horrors to a short game, but not when you're arguably the greatest short-game player in the history of the sport. And certainly not when a torn anterior cruciate ligament dictates what you can and can't do during those eight months.

"I spent a lot of time hitting easy shots because that's all I could do for a while," added Woods. "I've got more shots than I did before just because I've spent so much time on it, chipping and all the different shots around the greens.

During his practice round, Woods looked an awful lot like a healthier, more powerful version of the same player we've seen victory after victory for more than a decade. No limp. Full swing. Hitting against his left side. Which is to say that, while he's got a new swing, he's apparently got some new short-game shots, too.

"My short game has gotten a little better. Some of the shots I had forgotten I had over the years, I remembered how to hit them again, which is kind of nice," Woods said.

Kind of nice? When Woods feels kind of nice, he kind of wins. Even if he "forgot how long it takes to play 18 holes walking."