Per Published Reports: Tiger Yet To Swing A Club; Searching For His Explosiveness In The Gym

It was strange reading the quotes from Tiger’s press conference today to promote something. (Only special people were invited to the teleconference so I'm not privvy to tell you what he was promoting a new partnership with Hero MotoCorp, describing itself as "the World's single largest two wheeler motorcycle manufacturer based in India."

(I'm going to pause to let you digest that amazing get for Tiger, then remind you that those of us under non-embargo embargos are not obligated to spend much time dwelling on reaching new lows in the "who is that sponsor again?" stakes).

Anyway, it seems Tiger's back strengthening is going well, and voila, his strength is back but not enough to swing a golf club. Nor is he hiring a teacher anytime soon. Oddly, no one concluded from this that Tiger may just be burned out on golf, an understandable position considering the unprecedented level of his dedication over the previous 20 years.

This quote in Steve DiMeglio’s story would be funny if it wasn’t kind of a sad statement about Tiger's love for the gym superseding his love of playing golf.

"Well, golf‑wise, nothing. I haven't swung a golf club yet. I've just been shadow swinging without a club, but I've been busting my butt in the gym pretty hard," Woods said when asked about his preparation. I've got my strength back, which is nice. Now the next goal is to get my explosiveness and my fast twitch going, and that's the next phase of my training."

Fast twitch? Welcome to the jargon club, we have you in a locker between "reps" and "it-is-what-it-is."

Fleshing out this explosiveness thing, Karen Crouse included this in her NY Times story on the Woods press conference:

“I wasn’t as conditioned as I needed to be, so as the tournament would wear on, I would get more and more fatigued and tired, and I wasn’t as explosive,” Woods said. “I wasn’t as strong because I couldn’t burn the candle at both ends. I couldn’t lift the weights that I’m used to, or accustomed to lifting as well as playing and practicing.”

He added, “Eventually the game started to deteriorate a little bit because physically I couldn’t — I wasn’t in good enough shape to maintain it.”

As for finding a replacement for Sean Foley as his instructor, the explosiveness word came up again. Tim Finchem must have squealed when he heard this, from Doug Ferguson’s AP story:

"Am I looking for a new coach? As of right now, no, I'm not," Woods said. "Right now I'm just trying to get physically better, stronger, faster, more explosive. ... I'm in no hurry to look for one right now. As I said, I'm just focused on what I'm doing."