ATLANTA — Tiger Woods is back at the Tour Championship for the first time in five years, looking to close out a remarkably good season with a victory while building toward next week’s Ryder Cup.
Among the bigger surprises at the beginning of 2018 would have been to suggest that Woods would be at East Lake for the season-ending, 30-player event and Jordan Spieth would not.
“To come back from where I’ve come back from and to get here has been a pretty tall order and something I’m proud of,” Woods said Wednesday before a practice round on the course, which has seen the front and back nine flipped since he last played the Tour Championship in 2013.
Woods, 42, is playing his 18th tournament of the year, an impressive number given all the back issues that forced him to miss most of the past two seasons.
He has won the Tour Championship twice, in 1999 and 2007, the latter victory at East Lake when he also won the inaugural FedEx Cup. Woods also won the FedEx title in 2009 when he finished second to Phil Mickelson in the tournament.
Woods has a total of three runner-up finishes at East Lake but has played the Tour Championship just twice in the past eight years.
“In general, this is a ball striker’s course,” Woods said. “I mean, you’ve got to hit your golf ball well. You’ve got to drive it well, place your irons correctly. But it really does set up for a good ball striker. For most of my career, that’s basically what I’ve done.”
For Woods to win a third FedEx Cup (he is 20th in the standings), he will need to first win the Tour Championship and then have several things happen. Among them is Bryson DeChambeau, who is No. 1 in the FedEx standings, finishing tied for 15th or worse, while others in the top six — Justin Rose, Tony Finau, Dustin Johnson, Justin Thomas and Keegan Bradley — need to have various finishes outside of the top spots.
At least, Woods acknowledged, next year will be easier to understand when the FedEx Cup format changes to a final event that will throw out the points and be based on stroke bonuses to start the tournament.
“It makes it a lot less complicated, that’s for sure,” Woods said. “It’s pretty simple, straightforward. It’s very different, but I think it has simplified things, not only for the players, but certainly for the fans. The scenarios don’t play out as complicated as what is being described on TV. It has made it much easier to understand going in.”