Don't bet against Tiger at Masters

“I can’t believe you’re even asking that question,” said Duluth’s Stewart Cink.

Initially, there will be the wave of simple curiosity carrying Woods into his return to golf nearly five months since a broken moral compass led him into a fire hydrant, a tree and the newsrack at every supermarket checkout counter in the country.

Then — once it is determined that, yes, he will still wear pants to the first tee — there will come the more golf-oriented sort of concerns. Like how’s he hitting it (the golf ball, that is)?

Playing here this weekend at the Arnold Palmer Invitational, yet answering plenty of queries concerning a certain nearby Isleworth resident, PGA Tour players say they aren’t nearly ready to consider Woods critically wounded. That includes Cink, who himself will arrive at the Masters as a newly minted major champion (2009 British Open).

“We’re talking about Tiger Woods, the best player that’s ever played golf,” he said. “I’ve never seen anybody who plays golf like Tiger Woods does. So the answer to that question is yes, I believe he can be a factor.”

‘He’s killing it’

The only indication as to the current state of Woods’ game are reports from buddies who have knocked it around with him here in central Florida.

They say he did not leave his “A” game back in the Hattiesburg, Miss., clinic where he reportedly was being treated for issues stemming from multiple extra-marital affairs.

“He’s killing it. Absolutely killing it,” Arjun Atwal, a friend and fellow pro, told reporters earlier this week.

“If he takes that game up there [Augusta], I’d be hard-pressed to see anybody beating him,” added John Cook, Woods’ long-time friend.

For the first time in his 14-year professional career, Woods opted to skip Palmer’s tournament, held here in his own backyard. Thus, it will be 144 days between his last competitive round in Australia and the start of the Masters. In between, he has been laid low by a sex scandal of almost English royalty proportions.

Such a long, strife-filled layoff is not the recommended way to prepare for the season’s first major. The old guard here can not quite conceive of such a lead-in.

“I can’t fathom taking five months off and going to Augusta, unless circumstances make it that you have no choice,” Palmer said. “You can’t get very sharp not playing. Just practicing won’t do it.”

The younger set scratches its head, too. Asked if he could see himself playing effectively after so long away, Camilo Villegas said, “It would be a tough one.”

But, he quickly added, “I’m not the No. 1 player in the world. I haven’t won 70-something events” — 71, to be precise — “and 14 majors.”

Test of Tiger’s will

This Masters will pose the greatest test yet of Woods’ famous single-mindedness on a golf course. He has been known as a master of compartmentalization, keeping a high, strong wall between his personal life and his public pursuit of Nicklaus’ record of 18 major championships.

But he has faced nothing quite like the last four-plus months, having the seamiest details of his alleged trysts put out for display like tchotchkes at a yard sale.

Between the 2006 Masters and U.S. Open, he retreated to deal with the death of his father, and missed the cut in that Open.

In 2008, he went to the U.S. Open following a two-month recovery from knee surgery. Having sustained a stress fracture during his rehab, Woods limped his way through a playoff victory, then missed the remainder of the season recovering.

The belief that Woods can get his golfing groove back despite a ruptured reputation and a shredded personal life is pervasive.

A prominent British oddsmaker quickly established him as a 4-to-1 favorite to win in two weeks.

And 52 percent of those polled recently by CNN believed Woods would win his fifth Masters.

The well-wishers outnumbered the believers. Sixty percent said they hoped he would win.

‘It will be exciting’

As for those inside the ropes, the pros are weary of answering questions for and about Woods. Yet the sense of anticipation for this Masters is just as keen as that which likely will drive runaway television ratings.

Colin Montgomerie is playing at the Palmer, but not in the Masters field. Still, he’ll be a riveted viewer. “It will be interesting to see how the other players around him react when his name is on that leaderboard again,” he said. “It will be very exciting times.”

Cink will be playing the Masters, and he doesn’t even try to downplay the Woods effect. If the Masters poobahs ever need a Don King-like promoter to pump up the interest, they have found their man.

“I think it’s going to be one of the biggest events in golf history,” he said. “The biggest player in golf history is going to come back from his absence, and everybody is going to be scrutinizing his game and what he says and where he goes, where he has dinner — everything.

“I think it also will end up being a great golf tournament, because he probably will end up in the mix, and it will just be really compelling.”