Time will tell

His work almost done for the day, Tiger Woods stood in the 18th fairway at Whistling Straits in Sheboygan, Wis., waiting for the green to clear when he asked, “What time is my press conference?”

Gone was the sense of dread that came with meeting the media – his first time back at the Masters or facing the British tabloids at St. Andrews. Back then, he braced for questions about the extramarital affairs that got him into this mess, a broken marriage, the endorsements he lost.

Now, the attention has mostly shifted back to his golf.

Some reprieve that turned out to be.

One reporter asked Tuesday how he had gone from the No. 1 player in the world to “one of the worst players on the planet.”

Once the clear-cut favorite in any major, Woods heads into the PGA Championship not knowing what to expect himself. He used to win nearly 30 percent of the time on the PGA Tour. Now it’s a question of whether he’ll make it past the cut on Friday.

And for good reason.

Just two days ago, Woods endured his worst tournament when he shot 18-over 298 at Firestone – the course where he had won seven times – and beat only one player in the 80-man field.

He has broken par only four times in his last 20 rounds. He has not come seriously close to winning any of his eight tournaments this year. Instead of looking relaxed and confident, he said he had one more practice round and “hopefully everything will come right.”

The only surprise was that Woods said he expected to be this bad much earlier.

“To be honest with you, I thought I would have been here a little bit sooner, with all that’s going on,” he said. “But somehow, I’ve been able to play a little bit better than I thought for a stretch, and then it finally caught up with me last week.”

Phil Mickelson is being treated for arthritis that surfaced just before the U.S. Open and left him in so much pain he couldn’t walk.

Mickelson revealed Tuesday he has psoriatic arthritis, a condition he said causes the immune system to attack the body’s joints and tendons. Weekly shots of Embrel, which lowers his immune system, have brought the disease under control.

“I’m surprised at how quickly it’s gone away, and how quickly it’s been able to be managed and controlled,” he said. “I feel 100 percent, like I say. But when I’m laying there on the couch and I can’t move, you know, yeah, I had some concerns. But I feel a lot better now.”

Stricker returns a different golfer

Steve Stricker hasn’t forgotten how he felt when he failed to qualify for the 2004 PGA Championship at Whistling Straits.

“It was,” he said, “like a kick in the stomach.”

That PGA was the first men’s major golf championship held in Wisconsin in 71 years, and Stricker, a Madison, Wis., resident with a huge state following, felt terrible about missing it.

“The way my game was at the time, I really felt like I shouldn’t be playing, anyway,” he said.

Considered a rising star in the mid-1990s, Stricker was in a slump that saw him plummet to No. 337 in the world.

Now, he goes into the 92nd PGA Championship ranked No. 4 in the world and the winner of two tournaments this year and five since the start of the 2009 season. In July, he set the Tour’s 54-hole scoring record en route to victory in the John Deere Classic.

“I’m in a position in my game and in life and out here on Tour that, you know, it’s been a lot of fun,” he said. “I continue to try to get better, and I continue to try to work on things to try to achieve another level.”