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The Masters, golf’s first major championship of the season, begins play Thursday and Woods, a four-time past champion, arrives as he has every year since winning in 1997 in his first appearance as a professional: the pre-tournament favorite.

Except this year nothing about the journey has been remotely familiar.

Woods has not played competitive golf in five months. He has spent 45 days in rehabilitation centers. He has left a trail of tardy indiscretions scattered like shag-bag balls across an open field.

Singlehandedly, he has turned text messaging into a contact sport. Since crashing his SUV into a fire hydrant and opening the door to tales of a secret life of sexapades, he has fallen to earth, a mere mortal after all.

And still, here he is, the hands-down favorite.

“Nothing’s changed, going to go out there and try to win this thing,” Woods said.

Those who make a living predicting such things believe he will. Betting lines list Woods as a 4-1 favorite. Next best is Phil Mickelson 10-1, followed by Ernie Els 11-1 and Padraig Harrington 16-1.

“I would not be surprised at all if he was contending and I would not be surprised if he played better golf than ever. But, there’s obviously a doubt to that and we will only be able to find that out on Sunday evening.”
- Padraig Harrington “And those guys that set the odds know a lot more than I do,” Harrington said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he was contending but I just don’t know. No matter what, how he looks or what he comes up and says, you don’t know fully how this is affecting him inside and how it’s affecting his golf. People react differently.

“I would not be surprised at all if he was contending and I would not be surprised if he played better golf than ever. But, there’s obviously a doubt to that and we will only be able to find that out on Sunday evening.”

The uncertainty is very much a part of the appeal. Can Woods really wake up from a five-month golf nap and contend in a major. If Woods really wants to leave his issues behind, there certainly is no better way than to make bigger golf news to report.

And if Woods is capable of putting himself on Augusta National’s leaderboard on Sunday, contending for his 15th major championship, the sports world, and beyond, will stop to watch.

How can you not be curious?

At times looking back, you wonder how he competed at such a high level with all of this stuff going on,” Steve Stricker said. “It’s actually scary to think if he gets his mind a little bit freer and uncluttered that it could be better, is what I’m thinking. I mean, the guy is so talented and so mentally strong. If he can maybe get rid of all the outside factors, he actually could perform at a higher level. That’s what’s going to be interesting to watch, as a fan and as a player, just to see how he plays from here on out.”

The end result — if he’s the slightest big in contention during the weekend — is expected to be the largest television audience in golf history.

The words “Super Bowl numbers” have been suggested.

“He’s generally probably already played three or four tournaments by now and won two of them and everyone is talking Grand Slam every year,” said Geoff Ogilvy. “There’s always curiosity how he’s playing here but there’s probably a level of curiosity from not the golf fans. It’s a broader audience probably this week than maybe the Masters has ever seen, which is cool.”

For his part, Woods insists he is ready for the challenge. He returned to a practice routine about a month ago, and has since spent significant time visiting Augusta National and working toward an on-course comfort zone. “Well, the fact that I haven’t really played at all, that’s a little big concerning,” he said. “I’m hoping to get my feel back quickly, you know, feel for the game, feel for shots, feel more how my body is reacting and what’s my distance are going to be.

“I hope to get that back relatively quickly. Maybe hopefully, the first hole. But if not, please, it’s the second hole. That’s what I’m looking forward to, getting out there and doing it.”

Even if Woods returns to hit all the shots — including the amazing ones — that made him the world’s No. 1 player, there is debate whether that will be enough to automatically make him the Tiger he used to be. A large part of Woods’ immense success was built not just on golf skills, but a bigger-than-life aura and intimidation factor. Woods’ built a competitive edge on the perception he was immune to pressure and above human frailties.

Stepping to the tee box for a final-round title march, Woods not only knew he would win, but competitors knew he knew he was going to win. And Woods knew they knew. Now, can a guy whose life looks like a Jerry Springer Show outtake really expect to again stare down the competition with an air of invincibility?

“I would think that most golfers will look at this as two separate events,” Harrington said. “I think most players would see what went on in Tiger’s life as his personal side, which has no real bearing on his golfing life.

“Now, we don’t know what sort of bearing it’s going to have obviously in the short term. He could be incredibly stressed and have quite an effect, but, long term, you’ve actually got to think that there was obviously a lot of distraction outside of the golf course. You’ve got to actually think he’s going to be a better player on the golf course going forward.”

Fascinating, isn’t it? As far-fetched as the idea of ending a five-month absence by immediately getting into the hunt at Augusta might seem, no one seems convinced it could not happen.

Two years ago Woods returned from a nine-week absence because of injury to win the U.S. Open at Torrey Pines, and immediately needed knee surgery. On the flip side, returned from an absence following the death of his father in 2006 and missed the cut on the U.S. Open.

“We’ve spent 15 years underestimating what he can do,” Ogilvy said. “I have 100 percent confidence in his ability to win the tournament. Not saying he’s going to but I think he can.”

It’s enough to make you look.

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http://blogs.golf.com/presstent/2010/03/mark-calcavecchia-says-tiger-woods-changed-his-cell-number-five-times-last-year.html

Mark Calcavecchia says Tiger Woods changed his cell

number five times last year

As it turns out, Tiger Woods wasn’t asking his alleged mistress Jaimee Grubbs to do anything he wouldn’t do when he asked her to tweak her cell phone.

“I didn’t really think about it, but in the course of last year he changed his number five times,” says Tiger’s one-time texting buddy Mark Calcavecchia. “The last time he did, I said, ‘Man, you change phone numbers more than I change underwear.’”

Like many others, Calc is a huge Tiger fan. The two have played practice rounds together before majors and other tournaments, and the 49-year-old veteran took special care to zing Tiger when he had, say, sweated through his shirt but neglected to change it before a TV interview.

“It was always something silly,” Calcavecchia says. “But I sent him a couple of texts right after all this stuff started and obviously he didn’t get back to me. I’m sure one of these days out of nowhere he’ll text me and say, ‘This is my new number.’”

Almost to a man, players, caddies and agents profess to have been totally unaware of Tiger’s double life, but in retrospect Woods’s multiple changes of cell number wasn’t Calc’s only tip-off that something was up.

“I did know of a girl he was seeing in Phoenix,” he says. “But I didn’t know the time frame. I didn’t know if it was before or after he was married that he was with her. I knew it was close. It was 2004 sometime. I didn’t think much of it then…”

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by Jarred Powell

Tiger Woods’ press conference two weeks ago served two purposes: First and most obvious was to clean up his image.

The second purpose, which I feel has not been picked up, has been to save what endorsements he has left.

The Tiger brand has been hit hard since this news came out. His sponsors have left him quicker than a golf ball he hits off the tee.

Accenture, Gillette, Electronic Arts, and Tag Heuer all stopped endorsing him within days of the announcement. They were paying him a total of $48 million. Gatorade just ended their relationship with the Tiger Brand last week. That deal was worth $1 million per year. It is estimated on nowpublic.com that 90 percent of Woods’ income comes from his endorsement deals. The only endorsement he has left is his biggest and most popular one, Nike.

The shoe company has been vocal about sticking by Woods in his moment of crisis. They’ve stated, “When he wins again, people will forget about everything.”

He should thank them, but he also needs to thank Kobe Bryant.

Bryant, arguably the best and most marketable player in the NBA right now, was in the same position in 2003 after being charged with sexual assault just months after signing with Nike. He was at the cusp of superstardom the way Lebron James is right now when all of this happened. Because of this incident, Nike kept him, but they didn’t put out anything associated with his likeness and Nike.

Fast forward seven years to 2010. Bryant still dominates on the basketball court and has won an NBA championship, MVP award, and most fans have forgetten the sexual assault incident.

Now imagine the money that could have been made by Nike had they continued to endorse Bryant since 2003. Then add Lebron James in the mix, and you have two of the top five athletes in the world in money-generating power.

Fool me once, my fault; fool me twice, your fault. Nike knows what it is doing here.

From their previous experience, they don’t want to lose out on any money that can be gained. Had Bryant not done better in his situation, Nike would have abandoned Woods along with everyone else.

Instead, he got better and is the man in his sport. Woods is the No. 1 player in his sport as well. They have stood by Woods in his darkest hour, and when the time comes for him to play again, he will return the favor.

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As seen on ESPN Sports at http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/100303

Ever see those crazy guys in the park playing speed chess? They’re flying along at warp speed, trusting their instincts and trying to avoid one mistake that might get them checkmated. That’s what doing an online chat is like. Writing a column is like chess; you have time to mull strategies and move pieces into the right places. But an online chat? Speed chess.

My Friday chat on ESPN.com drew 42,000 questions. The total transcript was 9,600 words, and because I probably typed two-thirds of them, that means I banged out about 6,400 words in three hours. When I wasn’t typing, I was sifting through questions looking for a good one to post. Didn’t pee. Didn’t get a drink. Didn’t even stand up. Just emptied my brain on a keyboard.

Now here’s why I rarely do chats anymore: Under speed chess conditions, it becomes exceedingly possible that either (A) I might say something inappropriate, (B) I might infuriate my bosses in some way or (C) I might argue a point incorrectly without realizing it until later. On Friday, I made a mistake comparing the 2010 Tiger Woods to the 1970 Muhammad Ali, saying Tiger’s comeback would be much tougher because “everyone under 35 was rooting for Ali.” Total hyperbole that never would have happened had I spent more time thinking about it. More importantly, I botched a quality point that could have made for an interesting column.

Let’s return to my admittedly rushed thesis …

When Tiger Woods returns to golf, he will face a level of pressure that well surpasses anything any other transcendent athlete has faced in my lifetime.

Yeah. Absolutely. Let’s hop on the course and play nine holes (in the form of points) to bang home the point that, yes, Tiger’s presumed return to golf in 2010 will be significantly more difficult than Ali’s return to boxing in 1970.

Hole No. 1 (par 4)
Tiger hasn’t played golf competitively in four months. As far as we know, until this week he hasn’t played a single hole since mid-November. Just Tuesday, there was a news article saying Tiger has returned home and is “trying to get back into a routine that includes golf and fitness.” Trying to get back into a routine? That sounds ominous.

Hole No. 2 (par 4)
The man is coming off two significant derailments: Reconstructive knee surgery (summer 2008) and a self-imposed exile (winter of 2009-10). In a 41-month stretch from 2005 through the 2008 U.S. Open, Tiger reeled off 25 PGA Tour titles (six of them majors). Is that guy gone? How many times have we seen an imposing golfer lose his way and never regain his mojo? Remember when Tom Watson stopped making big putts? Remember when Greg Norman lost his confidence after too many collapses? Golf is a mental sport. You need a ton of self-confidence, you need an unwavering belief in your own talents and you need to be able to tune out any and all distractions. Hell, Tiger could barely handle someone’s camera clicking during his backswing. He’s going to be able to handle … this?

[+] Enlarge

AP Photo/Rob CarrTiger would undoubtedly love to turn the clock back to 2006, when he won the PGA Championship.

(Note: When Ali returned from his exile with rusty skills, he stopped dancing as much, absorbed more punishment and learned to pick his spots. As his skills slipped even further later in his career, he absorbed insane amounts of punishment and banked on his innate will to prevail in the end. That’s the main reason he can barely say a sentence right now. If Tiger comes back with similar rust, I can’t imagine him being able to change his style on the fly as Ali did. Either it comes back or it doesn’t.)

Hole No. 3 (par 3)
Don’t discount Tiger’s advancing age (34) at this point. Watson never won another major after he turned 34; neither did Arnold Palmer, Fred Couples, Seve Ballesteros or Curtis Strange. Nick Faldo won only one major after 34 — the 1996 Masters that Norman choked away. Only Jack Nicklaus thrived from 34 to 40 (16 PGA Tour titles, three majors), although Norman (eight Tour titles, one major) and Lee Trevino (six titles, one major) also fared pretty well. Tom Kite peaked after he turned 34. Nick Price won two majors at 37; Mark O’Meara won his only two at 41. And sure, Tiger was better than all of those guys. But none of those guys had to keep winning while rebuilding his life after a DEFCON 1 public humiliation.

Hole No. 4 (par 4)
Winning his wife back will require significant effort — certainly more than Tiger spent on his family pre-Thanksgiving. Ali, Jordan, Tiger pre-2010 … part of what made them great was that they weren’t family men. Families were just another thing they owned, no different from cars, houses or whatever. Everything was compartmentalized, and nothing was allowed to affect the overall brand. The brand came first. Always. Because Tiger appears to be serious about keeping his family intact, how could that not affect his golf routine to some degree? And what about dealing with the day-to-day stuff any philandering husband faces while trying to win back a wife battling trust issues?

Why didn’t you answer when I called? Why does your BlackBerry have a password again? Who’s going on this trip with you?

When Ali’s second marriage finally fell apart while he was training for the George Foreman fight in Zaire, he simply fell for someone else (the beautiful Veronica Porsche, who later dumped him right around when the Parkinson’s started kicking in) and dumped his dutiful wife, Belinda. (Brutally, actually. She heard about him squiring around with someone else, then flew across the world to confront him. Didn’t work.) Ali ended up winning the two biggest fights of his career in succession: Foreman and the third Joe Frazier fight. He didn’t care about hurting his brand; if anything, the media in Zaire covered up the love triangle. Had he been more worried about his brand, losing everything he had, keeping his family together and rehabbing his public image, wouldn’t that have affected his performances in the Foreman and Frazier fights at least a little?

Hole No. 5 (par 4)
Once upon a time, everyone left Tiger alone, partly because the media didn’t want to piss him off, partly because he crafted such a good buffer between himself and the outside world, and partly because there wasn’t anything sexy or interesting about him. That’s how he lived from 1997 to 2009. Even named his boat “Privacy.” And really, he had it.

Not anymore. Tiger will spend the rest of his playing days as Jordan did in the latter half of his Chicago career — trapped in hotel suites and charter planes, occasionally emerging to play sports, and if he needs to blow off steam, his options are “the nearest high-stakes gambling area,” and that’s about it. I’m not saying Tiger’s life was normal before Thanksgiving, but he didn’t have paparazzi stalking him, tabloids making up things about him, bloggers chronicling his every move and people taping him with camera phones everywhere he goes. Fish, meet bowl. And he’s a big-ass fish. How will he handle it? We don’t know.

[+] Enlarge

AP Photo/Ed KolenovskyAli’s court case received plenty of media attention, but it was nothing like today’s 24/7 news cycle.

Hole No. 6 (par 5)
Forget about Ali; not even Jordan faced anything like the current sports/celebrity climate. It can’t even be called a 24/7 news cycle anymore. It’s like 72/7. TMZ, Us Weekly, People, Star, gossip blogs, sports blogs, 24-hour sports radio, ESPN talking heads, six mainstream sports Web sites, camera phones, message boards, YouTube, flip cameras, Twitter … are you kidding me? Would you want to be a famously shamed athlete striving to regain past success in 2010?

Plus, Jordan had the buffer of a basketball court. Ali had the buffer of a boxing ring and just a few fights per year. Golf? Doesn’t work that way. You’re walking among fans for hole after hole. They’re right there. Always. Studying every move you make from as close as five feet away. And you can’t come and go; you need to be out there swinging your sticks week after week after week in city after city after city. Which means this will be a traveling sideshow, at least for the first few months.

Hole No. 7 (par 4)
How will the fans react? Do we know? Do we have any inkling? I could see the turmoil eventually turning him into a sentimental underdog; after all, we watched him go through the Celebrity F— up Car Wash, dissected it, made our jokes, broke it down at cocktail parties, and now, selfishly, we’re ready to see him reclaim “best golfer ever” status. That’s the most idealistic view of how it plays out. But we don’t know. And I guarantee you, neither does Tiger Woods.

Remember, everybody has been rooting for him since he was wowing Mike Douglas as a 2-year-old. Although we’ve seen tournaments when another golfer swayed the gallery from him, Tiger always knew where he stood with fans. But what about now? (On Wednesday, an ABC News/ESPN poll revealed that only 39 percent of the 1,000 respondents surveyed had a favorable impression of Tiger, compared with 85 percent in 2005.) Golf and tennis are the two worst possible sports for any elephant-in-the-room situation, thanks to dead silence nearly all the time. Every heckle will feel like an uber-heckle. Every cheer for a competing golfer will feel even more biting than usual. Again, think of how he reacted on the golf course pre-Thanksgiving. How will he handle it?

(Note: The 2008 U.S. Open catapulted Tiger to a different level. Winning it on one leg did for him what the Foreman fight did for Ali and the 72-win season did for MJ: It made everyone say, “We’re now at the point that I’m going to be telling my great-grandkids that I watched this guy. So let the winning continue!” As long as we don’t have a hometown favorite involved, we’re always going to root for greatness over anything else. That’s the best place to be as an athlete — people pulling for you, always, week after week, with the athlete feeding off their strength. Can he win that back?)

Hole No. 8 (par 3)
When Ali returned from his Vietnam-related exile, he had two massive groups of people pulling for him: Black America and the anti-war movement. He was part of something bigger than he was; that gave him additional motivation to persevere, and if anything, he fed off those two worlds. Tiger isn’t part of anything. Where will he draw that extra strength from if the fans don’t come through for him?

(Note: I thought about delving into the whole “women hate Tiger” angle here, but I’m not sure it has anything to do with anything. Just know that if he plays the 2010 Masters, my wife will be rooting for him to accidentally club himself in the head on every swing. And I don’t think she’s alone.)

Hole No. 9 (par 5)
The biggest wrinkle nobody is mentioning: What if this starts out badly? What if Tiger plays a couple of tournaments and just stinks? What if he can’t get anything going? What if the dominant story becomes, “Will Tiger Woods ever get it back?” What if he’s dealing with that question constantly, day after day, week after week, city after city, over and over and over again, and that doubt seeps into his head? Ali fought only every few months and had the luxury of picking cream-puff opponents if need be. Tiger will be competing against himself week after week — not just his potential, but the ghost of what he could once do. There’s no greater pressure in sports.

Now, there’s a chance golf will become something of a sanctuary for Tiger Woods — a little like what basketball meant to Jordan in those final Chicago seasons. Including playoffs, Jordan played 310 of a possible 310 games in three seasons from 1996 through 1998. Why? Because he was a hypercompetitive maniac, but also because a basketball court was one of the few places that made him happy. I could see this happening with Tiger. Potentially. There’s also a chance Tiger could come roaring out of the gate in Eff You Mode and give us an exhilarating stretch of golf like we’ve never seen in our lives. Everything’s in play.

At gunpoint, if I could wager on any conceivable scenario, I would wager on Tiger coming back in severe Eff You Mode, like a seething MJ in Game 1 of the 1992 Finals. The greatest ones have a way of channeling negativity and fueling it toward whatever makes them great. Jordan made a habit of it. So did Ali. But they were also larger-than-life personalities, whereas Tiger was always just someone who was freakishly good at golf and that’s it.

So it remains to be seen whether Tiger has Severe Eff You DNA. But if you were him, would you have rather had this saga happen in 1970 or 2010? It’s no contest. He’s being picked apart like a biology frog right now, and we won’t know whether three months (and counting) of ridicule and shame permanently derailed his confidence in any way. Only when he emerges from hiding and starts playing again will we have our answer.

[+] Enlarge

AP Photo/Joe Holloway Jr.By the time Ali returned to fight Jerry Quarry in 1970, he had legions of supporters.

That brings us to Ali. His exile lasted almost 43 months, with the former champ finally returning for an exhibition in Atlanta (September 1970), then his first official fight against Jerry Quarry a few weeks later. Unlike Tiger, Ali loved the limelight and remains the greatest natural resource the sports media ever encountered. He traveled to dozens of college campuses and spoke out about racial injustice and his stance against the war. He had two enormous allies in Howard Cosell (the most powerful sports broadcaster at the time) and Sports Illustrated (the most powerful sports magazine), as well as a phalanx of big-name writers (George Plimpton, Dick Schaap, etc.) who attached themselves to him and sang his praises. He never had to deal with a 24/7 news cycle; if anything, it was a once-a-week cycle. Either way, it wouldn’t have mattered. Ali always loved being the center of attention.

You can’t overstate how much Ali’s life changed from 1967 (when he was considered a draft-dodging, uppity, outspoken negro who had the gall to adopt a Muslim name, and if that’s not enough, it seemed as though he was headed for jail) to the fall of 1970 (when he had been reinvented as something of a visionary in a country now obsessed with the Vietnam quagmire and equal rights). Heading into the Quarry fight, he still had Old-School White America against him (then again, so did Jim Brown, Bill Russell and Lew Alcindor), as well as pro-war zealots (then again, so did countless celebrities and musicians who also spoke out against the war) and even some prominent writers (most notably Red Smith and Jim Murray) still excoriating him. His biggest issue was a suspension by Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad — a rift that healed only because Ali became a cash cow postexile, so of course the Nation of Islam quickly made amends — that briefly worried his camp about his safety.

But the pressures of Ali’s exile (especially in the first two years) shouldn’t be confused with the pressure of his actual comeback (which wasn’t nearly as daunting as you would think). By the fall of 1970, Ali wasn’t getting hounded by paparazzi or picked apart by an obsessive media. If anything, he lost a little fame as the exile dragged along, and he fell out of public consciousness to some degree. Sports Illustrated put him on its cover in May 1969, then deemed him unworthy of another until the month of the first Frazier fight nearly two years later. In the weeks leading up to the Quarry fight, most of the anti-Ali stuff had died down or disappeared entirely. He had evolved into a “political and social force,” as biographer Thomas Hauser described him. In Hauser’s book, longtime boxing promoter Jim Jacobs described in detail how things had changed for Ali after getting stripped of his title:

“A substantial portion of the American public disliked him, and worse, they were getting tired of hearing what he was about. But the exile turned that around. It showed people that Ali was sincere. It made him an underdog. … And traveling around the country, speaking on college campuses, Ali was able to bring his message to tens of thousands of young men and women. In a way, it was like a Presidential candidate sowing the seeds for future caucuses and primaries. And of course, people began to feel that whether or not they liked Ali, he shouldn’t have been forced out for his beliefs … (when he came back against Quarry), Ali was paid more money for that fight than he’d ever been paid before.”

Here’s how Sports Illustrated’s Martin Kane described Ali’s first exhibition fight in Atlanta:

“The roof did not fall in. No one threw a bomb. Fire and brimstone did not rain down from heaven and no one was turned into a pillar of salt. There wasn’t even a picket outside the Morehouse College gym in Atlanta — just a pretty girl distributing election campaign pamphlets. Not a peep of protest had been uttered — in Atlanta or elsewhere — during the few days of promotion that preceded the event.” By that time, Ali had softened much of his pro-Islam rhetoric, picked his words more thoughtfully and started caring about the potentially unflattering actions of the people around him. Sports Illustrated’s Mark Kram visited him before the Quarry fight and described him like so:

“The suspension by Elijah seems to have jolted him into extreme caution; a need and desire for money so that he can ensure the future of his family seems to have made him conscious of the practical aspects of the world. Where he was once one of the indefatigable consumers anywhere, a one-man war against recession, he now behaves like a careful prince of commerce. Even his camp, once so virulent with contempt for others, is of a different character. Cap’n Sam, Ali’s bodyguard and inspired white hater, is gone, and Ali’s craftily obedient brother is obviously absent. Only Bundini, his phrasemaker and ‘witch doctor,’ remains. ‘All I think about now,’ says Ali, ‘is providing for my family so they won’t have it as difficult as I did. So my three little darling girls can get a good education and learn from the beginning how to read and spell. Not like me.’”

When Ali finally returned to the ring for real, a considerable number of Americans were rooting for him — not “everyone,” as I stupidly overstated in the chat, but a sizable chunk — and the event itself captured the revolutionary spirit of that era. Activist Julian Bond described the Quarry fight “like nothing I’ve ever seen, the black elite of America was there” and decided it was “more than a fight … because that night, Atlanta came into its own as the black political capital of America.” Ali’s comeback tapped into something larger than just boxing. And he knew it.

Within three years, Muhammad Ali would become America’s most popular athlete since Babe Ruth. He changed some; the world around him changed even more. But I skimmed through my collection of Ali books, read the old Sports Illustrateds and even sifted through the New York Times articles from that year, and at no point in the fall of 1970 did anyone wonder whether Ali might fold from the pressure of that comeback. He had come to peace with everything that had happened to him. He just wanted to reclaim his career. Sure, there were concerns for his safety in such a violent era — in fact, policemen and security guards blanketed Atlanta for the exhibition and for the real fight — but those concerns proved to be unfounded. Nothing happened.

Forty years later, many people (including me) wonder whether Tiger Woods might fold under the pressure of his comeback. It’s a fair concern. The pressures aren’t nearly as meaningful as the ones surrounding Ali — one of the most important, courageous and influential athletes ever — but they remain pressures nonetheless. Add them together, and it’s no contest. When Ali actually returned in September 1970, it was a cakewalk compared with what Tiger will face this month or next month or whenever he actually returns.

Regardless, I probably shouldn’t do chats anymore — not because I screwed up but because it’s dumb to waste points better served in a larger format such as this column. The greatest golfer of his generation, and possibly ever, has to rebuild three things — his family, career and brand — while trying to win tournaments and recapture old glories. The most private superstar athlete of his generation will live under unbearable public scrutiny for the next few months at the very least. They are the same person. And if you claim that you can predict exactly how that person will emerge from this twisted mess … you are lying.

Bill Simmons is a columnist for ESPN.com and the author of the recent New York Times best-seller, “The Book of Basketball.” For every Simmons column and podcast, check out Sports Guy’s World. Follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/sportsguy33.

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Nicklaus said Wednesday that “it would surprise me” if Woods did not return to competitive golf in time for the Masters, a tournament the embattled world No. 1 has won four times in his career.

“I suspect he’ll play something before Augusta,” Nicklaus said behind the 18th green at PGA National, where the Honda Classic opens on Thursday. “Your guess is as good as mine. I’d be very surprised if he doesn’t play something before Augusta.”

Nicklaus has been reluctant to comment much about Woods since the saga involving revelations of infidelity began late last year, saying more than once that someone else’s private life isn’t any of his business. He reiterated that belief again Wednesday after finishing his Pro-Am round at the South Florida course he redesigned.

A person with knowledge of Woods’ schedule told The Associated Press on Tuesday that Woods returned to his home near Orlando, over the weekend after a week of family counseling and resumed practicing for the first time in nearly four months.

Like many, Nicklaus seemed to take that as a sign that Woods could be back sooner than later. The Masters begins April 8.

“It would surprise me if he didn’t,” Nicklaus said. “I can’t imagine in 100 years he’s going to miss this. None of you guys do either. But I don’t know. I don’t know. I’ve been very noncommittal about anything as it’s not my business. But as it relates to him playing golf, my guess is as a golfer he’s going to want to try to play Augusta if he’s got his other things in order.”

Earlier this year, Nicklaus said 2010 would be “a big year” for Woods if he wanted to get closer to Nicklaus’ record of 18 major championships. Three of this year’s majors will be on courses where Woods has been dominant before, Augusta National, Pebble Beach and St. Andrews.

Of Woods’ 14 majors, half have come on those three courses. Woods has never missed a Masters or a U.S. Open since 1995.

Nicklaus is going back to the Masters, a tournament he won six times, as an honorary starter this year. He agreed to take on the role last year, and will join Arnold Palmer for the opening shot of the tournament. In time, he expects Gary Player to join them.

The honorary start is something Nicklaus never saw as a player, and he spent several minutes Wednesday talking about that after finishing the round he played with Dan Marino, Drew Brees and saxophonist Kenny G. (For what it’s worth, Nicklaus said he broke 80, after closing birdie-birdie.)

Then the questions turned to Woods.

“I didn’t think I was going to have anything else,” Nicklaus said.

Woods was photographed hitting balls at Isleworth on Feb. 18. One day later, he ended nearly three months of silence by speaking to a small group of associates, a statement that got worldwide attention.

“I do plan to return to golf one day, I just don’t know when that day will be,” Woods said on Feb. 19. “I don’t rule out that it will be this year.”

Nicklaus was asked if Woods’ presence would make the Champions Dinner, a pre-Masters tradition, different.

The only man with more major championships than Woods didn’t hesitate to answer.

“No. It’s the Champions Dinner,” Nicklaus said. “His personal life is his personal life. As a golfer, he’s a sensational golfer. He’s a great athlete. He’ll figure out his own problems. But as a golfer, he’ll come back and get his game in shape and play. That’s what he does.”

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