Reinvention of Woods' game still a work in progress

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Tiger Woods put himself in position to make putts Thursday but said he just couldn't coax them into the hole.

PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. -- Tiger Woods won't wear his traditional red shirt until Sunday. Lately, though, he's been showing us he can bleed.

Inside the Numbers

Woods thru 18 Holes

Category Total Rank Eagles 1 T2 Birdies 2 T110 Pars 12 T23 Bogeys 3 T43 Double Bogeys 0 N/A Other 0 N/A Driving Accuracy 71.4% T32 Driving Distance 300.5 yds. 13 Greens in Regulation 66.7% T43 Putts per Round 31.0 T112 Putts per GIR 1.833 T102 Sand Saves 0.0% T73

There are 54 holes left in THE PLAYERS Championship, and Woods still has plenty of opportunity to give us one of his typical better-than-most moments or make the kind of charge he so often does, but what we're seeing right now is another reinvention of himself and his game. When it will be complete, no one knows. Not even Woods. And that admission is as surprising as it is human and introspective.

Woods not breaking 70 in the opening round of THE PLAYERS Championship is nothing new, and that trend continued on Thursday with a 1-under 71 that left him six shots off the lead. Not being able to wait to get back home from golf tournaments is. That's something Woods admitted that he could never understand players saying before -- until he became a father, that is.

That's not to say he's somehow distracted by family life, or in some sort of slump, or that his singular focus of winning every golf tournament he enters by as much as possible is any less narrow than whatever fairway he's standing on, or that he somehow can't adjust to a new swing post-knee surgery.

Woods nearly won the Masters with what he called a "Band-Aid" swing, almost won the Quail Hollow Championship in similar form and did win the Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by MasterCard by finally getting all the disjointed parts to click just well enough. In the four tournaments since his first of the season, he's finished in the top 10 every time.

Confidence is not something Woods has ever lacked and probably ever will, but the admission of uncertainty is just the latest thing he is learning to deal with and adjust to, the same way he is with his body, which coming off the most significant injury of his career.

"I have come into this event and for some reason haven't hit it well," Woods said earlier in the week. "I haven't really put all the pieces together. It's going to take a little bit of time.

"The first tournament back I just didn't have the pop in my body. Each and every week it's getting better. I don't know [when I'll be all the way back]."

Like most of the rest of his season, Thursday it wasn't all the way back. Woods hit 10 of 14 fairways and 12 of 18 greens in regulation, but missed an astonishing eight putts from inside 15 feet. That's been the story of his year -- when one thing is going well, another part of his game is broken.

"My best ballstriking week so far has been Doral," Woods said after a practice round earlier in the week. "I hit it great the entire week there. Didn't putt. Didn't hit it very good at Bay Hill, but I putted."

Putting is not something he did well in the first round. "I was in a position all day to make putts and just didn't do it," Woods said Thursday. "My speed was off early, then I got my speed down and I kept lipping out putts."

So where does this leave Woods heading into the second round and more importantly the rest of the season?

All it means is that, much like knowing that his swing in 1999 couldn't hold up in 2009, Woods is aware, almost stunningly so, that his body and his game need to recalibrate.

Rarely do athletes of Woods' ability and stature ever admit to as much, at least not publicly, but part of what makes Woods so great is a self-awareness and the ability to adapt and change whatever needs to be fixed.

"It just takes time," Woods said of his game and body coming all the way back.

It also takes a player like Woods, who, while human after all, has proven to be a pretty chameleon throughout his career, too.

Follow all the action at TPC Sawgrass this week on Twitter at Twitter.com/pgatour and get more news and insight from Brian Wacker at Twitter.com/pgatour_brianw.