Dubai Desert Classic 2011

Dubai Desert Classic 2011:Different continent, but as Tiger Woods looked forward to his first competitive round outside the United States in 2011, former professional golf hippo read from the same old scenario.

“To win,” he said when asked about his hopes for the Dubai Desert Classic. “That’s why I tee it. If I am in the case, it is to win. It’s simple and easy. I do not always win. I definitely lost a lot more tournaments than I won. But that goal every week you tee it, and that does not change. ”

Of course Woods would say that on the eve of the event – the majority of top-class players to do so, at least publicly – but it is fair to say, the 14-time major champion once said about the so-familiar mantra with a bit more conviction. Fifteen months without a victory and countless attacks on their professional and personal pride, not least in a rash of former sponsors who have distanced themselves from their once-gilded street vendor, had its effect.

Just a last competitive appearance Woods two weeks ago at the Farmers Insurance Opens in San Diego, the tournament is traditionally used to remind his peers of his superiority at the beginning of each season.

He won the tournament six times, but the experience this year was humiliating one of his 44-place memorable only for the fact that his rookie playing partner for the finals, Brendan Steele, suggested later that Woods did not “Given all this, “During the three more-Par Round of 75. “I tried very hard, but I just was not much,” Woods said when asked about comments Steele. This much, of course, true.

Once abandoned by his former coach Hank Haney, the world number 3, together with the Canadian swing coach, Sean Foley in August last year, and together they began to repair their swings – the third time in a 15-year professional career Woods, he proceeded to such significant changes in his technique.

So far, they appear to have made some progress, although the promise to show Woods in second place at the Chevron World Challenge at the end of last year, disappeared when he got to San Diego.

“I’ve been here before,” he said. “It takes a long time. I went, as I have said for two years where I did nothing, and I went through a year-and-a-half period [from 1997 to 1999], where I did not do anything. It is necessary to time to make these changes. You do not just make changes and start winning a lot of golf tournaments. This is not working. ”

As for failures in San Diego? “It was good that these kind of problems show themselves in a tournament atmosphere and it was very good to identify and fix it.”

Woods and his Canadian Sidekick spent last week working on the weaknesses that had betrayed him in San Diego, especially in his short game, and they had hoped that the fix, because a rigid examination ahead over the next four days.

Emirates course is not particularly long by modern standards, but it quickly greens and narrow fairways. Suffice it to say that if an American has flaws in their game they will be quickly identified.

Even if the forest to recover part of the magic that helped him win twice here in the past is still no guarantee that will be enough. Golf world has changed dramatically in a short period of time and evidence that will be clear to him when he steps on the first target for the opening round to find Lee Westwood and Martin Kaymer waiting for him.

The Englishman and the German booth at number 1 and number 2 in the world rankings, respectively, and, thanks to common sense and a sense of theater someone in power in the European tour, they were paired with Woods for the first 36 holes. Threeball should keep an eye on, to put it mildly, at least.

In the pre-match formalities Westwood and Kaymer had been careful to give their American visitor due respect, but one can assume they expect – or even expected – to remind him why he was No3 in those days.