LA JOLLA, Calif. — It may sound preposterous, but it’s highly possible Tiger Woods is enjoying and appreciating golf now more than he did when he was winning those 14 major championships.
Tiger Woods 2.0, at age 42, is a Tiger Woods who’s not only noticing the roses around him, but he’s actually stopping to smell them along the way.
After his 2-under 70 in the third round of the Farmers Insurance Open on Saturday at Torrey Pines, The Post asked Woods if it’s possible for him to enjoy the game more now than he did in his run of dominance, even if he never again wins at the crazy clip he once did.
“How many people have won at the clip I did?’’ Woods said. “You’re asking someone in their 40s … Am I enjoying it? Yes, a lot.’’
Woods, playing in his first PGA Tour event since last year’s Farmers, has shot 72-71-70 in his first three rounds to move up 26 spots on the leaderboard and enters Sunday’s final round at 3-under for the tournament, tied for 39th and eight shots behind leader Alex Noren’s 11-under.
He was tied for 84th after the opening round, tied for 65th after Friday (when he made the cut on the number) and he’s done it with short-game wizardry. In his past 27 holes, Woods has hit just four fairways and he’s 5-under in the stretch despite his errant ways off the tee.
Asked what his Saturday score might have been if his short game had not constantly bailed him out, Woods said, “It would have been snowing on me,’’ referring to making a few snowman eights on his scorecard.
Asked what his score might have been had he hit, say, five or six more fairways than the 3-of-14 he hit Saturday, Woods said, “It would be in the 60s.’’
That would have him in contention to win Sunday.
“His short game is probably as good or better than I ever remember it being,’’ said Brandt Snedeker, who was paired with Woods on Saturday. “The long game is there. The things I look for are: Is he fighting, is he grinding, is he doing the short-game stuff? It’s all there. It’s not as far away as I thought it would be not being able to play professional golf for really two years. Tiger brings the excitement and it’s fun to have that. We need that in golf.’’
Woods needs it, too. He probably needs the game more now than he did when he dominated, and his appreciation for it is showing.
There was a time when Woods was so entrenched in the heat of his prime that he blocked everything and everyone from his tunnel vision on a tournament day. Woods in those days looked, acted and played with an air of ruthlessness.
I remember one Masters when Woods emerged from the Augusta National clubhouse en route to the first tee to play a Sunday final round and he walked past his mother, Tida, with no acknowledgement that she was there to wish him well.
Woods dismissed her presence like an unsympathetic New Yorker stepping over and around a homeless person asking for spare change.
That Tiger Woods appears to be long gone. On Thursday, during Woods’ opening round, something occurred that was unheard of back in the days during his dominance.
Woods got to the fourth tee of the South Course, where there was a backup, and noticed four reporters, including myself, standing off to the side of the tee box on a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean. He walked the 20 or so yards down the hill to where we were standing and heard us pondering whether the marine life we were watching bounce in the breaking waves below were sharks.
“Those are dolphins,’’ Woods offered.
He then proceeded to tell us an anecdote about one year when he was en route to one of his seven PGA Tour victories at Torrey Pines when TV commentator and resident jokester David Feherty told him a funny story in the middle of his round.
Woods speaking to reporters during a tournament round?
He’ll probably never admit to this, but Woods might find himself enjoying golf more in his 40s in a time when he has little idea where this phase of his career will take him than he did when he owned the sport for that stretch in the early 2000s like no one ever has owned it.