Mendoza: Believe it or not: Woods feels old at 34

Friday, February 10, 2012

TIGER Woods is merely five shots behind leaders Charles Wi and eagle-making Danny Lee (2 eagles) and Dustin Johnson (2) heading into today’s Round 2 of the AT&T.

Woods scored a 4-under-par 68 with six birdies yesterday in his first tournament in the rich PGA Tour where the winner on Monday would pocket $1.2M from the $6.4-M pot.

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In December, Woods won his own Chevron World Challenge to end a two-year losing drought triggered mainly by revelations of his 2009 serial infidelities that ended in divorce last year.

In 2000, Woods swept the AT&T and US Open at Pebble Beach, routing the field by a record 15 strokes in the US Open.

But he is playing in the AT&T for only the first time since 2002 and, stunningly at 34, he said he “feels old” and gets tired too easily now.

I can’t accept that.

“Yeah, there is no doubt,” Woods told Carl Steward of San Jose Mercury News. “It is what it is. I don’t recover quite as well. I know that I’m sore quite often, just about every day when I’m playing with my kids. They’re not very tall yet, and bending
down there and playing with them and building things, that’s pretty low to the ground.

So I do get sore. I don’t ever remember being that.”

He is only 34 and he feels old already?

He has to reinvent himself because look, what will happen now to his dream of breaking the record 18 majors won by Jack Nicklaus if he says he’s old at 34?

He owns 14 majors now, not to mention a total of 72 PGA titles since he turned pro in 1996.

Well, it’s true he’s had injuries and surgeries on his knees.

But didn’t Woods declare middle of 2011 or something that he’s completely healed —mentally and physically?

His win in December was considered the signal of the second coming of Tiger Woods, right?

And his third-place tie in Abu Dhabi two weeks back would somehow validate that, I believe.

Is it his youth, not his game, that is slipping away?

“When we’re all younger, we feel more bulletproof or invulnerable,” he said.

Still, I don’t think Woods, at 34, is old dog.

Nicklaus was 46 when he won his 18th major (Masters) in 1986.

God, in a major, that is soooo oooold.

(alsol47@yahoo.com)