Enter The Woods Swing Reshaped, Golf’s Young Hero Rejoins Tour

Tiger Woods has retooled his swing, reshaped his putting stroke and, he said, recovered from an overdose of golf.

Fresh off a week of rest and adjustments, Woods, 21, is returning refreshed to a sport that has reached new heights of popularity since he turned pro last August.

Nevertheless, the Masters champion doesn’t necessarily expect to win the Western Open, which starts today at Cog Hill Golf & Country Club’s Dubsdread course in southwest suburban Chicago.

“If (fans) expect me to win every week, I think that’s unrealistic,” said Woods, who leads the 1997 PGA Tour with more than $1.4 million in earnings. “I don’t expect myself to win every week because that’s just physically impossible. I’m human. I’m going to make mistakes. You can’t hit the ball well and putt well every week.”

It’s been several weeks since his entire game has clicked.

After shooting 11 consecutive rounds under par - a stretch that included victories in the Masters and Byron Nelson Classic - Woods has been under par in one of 12 rounds.

He’s a cumulative 15-over during that span. In his last three tournaments (Memorial, U.S. Open, Buick Classic), his average finish was 43rd, his average winnings $13,428.

“Anytime you slump, you just go back to fundamentals. You start from ground one and work your way back up, and that’s exactly what I did,” said Woods, who skipped last week’s St. Jude’s Classic after finishing 43rd in the Buick. “I tore my swing apart, worked from the ground back up. Same thing with my putting stroke, and yeah, it’s coming around.”

When he wasn’t hitting buckets of balls and toiling at the practice green, Woods relaxed.

“I fished every day. What else did I do? Watch TV, sleep, eat. That’s about it,” he said.

One thing for sure: The fans will be intense at the Western Open.

The Motorola-sponsored $2 million tournament could draw crowds as high as 80,000 daily. That’s almost solely because of Woods - whose popularity among old and young, white and black, rich and poor already is legendary.

Woods knows some fellow pros don’t like playing with him because of the large galleries that follow him.

“But it’s more difficult playing in the group ahead of me because people leapfrog. They like to go ahead and watch us hit shots on the greens or hit shots off the tee,” he said. “The group ahead has to pay a pretty good price because the people are always moving.”

Woods played the Western Open twice as an amateur, missing the cut in 1994 and finishing 57th the following year.

“It was my first (tour event) cut made in the U.S. And I shot a 69 the last round, my first round in the 60s,” he said of the ‘95 Western. “I’ve had some pretty good experiences here, some real good positive memories.”