Ranking All Things Tiger From the Genesis, Plus Red-Hot Jon Rahm

The return of a certain 47-year-old Hall of Famer was the story at Riviera, Gary Van Sickle writes, until Sunday evening when the game's new No. 1 stood alone.

Did anyone other than Tiger Woods tee it up at last week’s Genesis Open? The Ranking staff will check its notes and get back to you …

10. Tiger Woods hits a tee shot past Justin Thomas. This is the moment Tiger has waited for. En route to the ball, he discreetly (but not discreetly enough in the Age of Cell Phone Cameras) slips a tampon to Thomas. Message received. Misogynistic hilarity ensues (well, between them). Also backlash. The Ranking asks a bigger question: Does Tiger carry a tampon in his pocket during every round of PGA Tour golf he plays just, you know, in case?...

9. Here’s the clue: Tiger Woods hasn’t eagled a hole on the PGA Tour more often than this one. Which hole is it? The sixth at Pebble Beach? The 18th at Torrey Pines? Maybe 16 at Bay Hill? Nope. According to Justin Ray, tour statmaster extraordinaire, it is Riviera Country Club’s first hole.

That’s odd, right, because Woods quit playing Riviera for a stretch of years due to his lack of success there? Last week was only his 12th tour event at Riviera. He made his sixth eagle last week at No. 1, tying Cog Hill’s 15th for his most-eagled hole. Woods has made five 3s at Augusta National’s 15th, Firestone South’s 2nd and Muirfield Village’s 11th.

But his Riviera mark is not odd at all. At 503 yards from a dramatic (and beautiful) elevated tee box by the clubhouse, Riviera’s opening hole is merely a medium-long par 4 for tour players and everybody knows it. It’s a barely-eagle. Call it a beagle …

8. The luckiest Genesis Open players may have been Matthias Schwab and Christiaan Bezuidenhout (gesundheit!), who drew a third-round pairing with Woods and were treated to watching him put up an impressive 67. They also watched Tiger hit it far off the tee. “Chris and I talked about it, he outdrove us on almost every hole, which was a little bit surprising,” Schwab said. Did Tiger happen to give you, say, a gift of some kind when he did it? ...

This otherwise-mundane photo of Tiger Woods squatting to look at a putt in the first round at the Genesis actually speaks volumes :: Gary A. Vasquez/USA TODAY Sports

7. Skip the swing-sequence footage comparing Tiger Woods’ swing last year during his nine rounds of official competition and last week’s Genesis Open. The only difference you needed to see came on the greens. The new Tiger can squat behind his ball relatively easily to read a putt. Last year’s Tiger couldn’t. But if those bionic body parts hit the market this year, Tiger calls dibs on first in line …

6. What could be more encouraging about Tiger Woods’ return to competition than … an encore performance? The Masters is still six weeks away, you know Woods wants to be sharp for that in the worst way. There is time to play another tournament before April. One obvious choice would be the Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill, where Tiger has won eight times in his career. Woods played coy and wouldn’t commit to Arnie’s place. Another option is The Players Championship, a Florida track even flatter than Bay Hill (if that’s possible) that would be a relatively easy walk for Tiger’s bad wheel and still give him two weeks to rest before Augusta. The prediction: Tiger will tell us when he’s good and ready. You think that’s kind of a cheap cop-out? Let’s talk cheap: How much did you pay to access this story?

5. Everyone digs the long ball in golf until it’s turned against them. Nobody drives it farther, pound for pound, than Rory McIlroy. But Tiger Woods outdrove Justin Thomas and McIlroy several times in Thursday’s opening round. “I put my driver up a click in loft at the start of the week,” McIlroy said, “I might have to turn it back down again. I don’t like him hitting it by me.” It may not have been a joke. McIlroy switched to a different driver for the second round and launched a 388-yarder at the par-4 3rd hole. Tiger did not outdrive him there (or give him a present, as far as we know). Megatron would’ve had a tough time catching McIlroy at that distance. Plus, his swing is kinda mechanical …

4. Even in his prime—criminy, it’s been more than two decades since that began—Tiger Woods was never guilty of brash. His pre-tournament statements were typically bland except when he mentioned expecting to win every time he teed it up. Then, they were a mix of confidence and results. At 47 and playing on a seriously damaged leg, he seemed on the brink of brash Tuesday before the Genesis. He trotted out his usual line, “I would not have put myself out here if I didn’t think I could beat these guys.” He beat some of them, tied for 45th, broke 70 in two of his four rounds and resembled a player potentially capable of contending. The Ranking staff thinks of it this way: This Tiger, whose upside remains unknown, is even more interesting than the old Tiger when everyone was pretty confident that you-know-who was going to run the table again—well, 82 times, anyway …

3. The only way Bernhard Langer would make The Ranking ahead of Tiger Woods would be if he set an all-time record or committed a felony. He did—that first thing. Langer successfully defended his Chubb Classic title (hold the wisecracks, please) and racked up PGA Tour Champions win No. 45, tying Hale Irwin atop the all-time senior win list. Langer, 65 years and change, also upped his record as the tour’s oldest winner. He holds down the top three positions on the geezer-iest winner’s list now. Has the German legend answered the age-old T-shirt question: Are you tough enough to get old? Ja …

2. The Ranking staff thought pro golf had a potential second-edition Big Three brewing with Scottie Scheffler, Jon Rahm and Rory McIlroy piling up victories. But now The Ranking wonders if maybe it’s a Fab Four? It’s impossible to ignore Max Homa, who is stronger than cement overshoes. (What? Somebody call the Metaphor Police and report a crime against English—the language, not Harris.) Homa pushed Rahm all the way to the 18th green where, needing birdie to have any hope of catching Rahm, he hit the pitch shot of a lifetime and watched it rattle off the flagstick. Big shot, big moment, big stage and Homa nearly took it to the max …

1. Is The Ranking going to have at least one item in which Tiger Woods isn’t mentioned? Ooops. Not now. Spain’s Jon Rahm is playing the best golf of his life which, up until now, has been finer than Tuscany. His last five PGA Tour finishes have been 1-1-7-3-1. That means three wins in five starts, and also the zip code of New York’s Suffolk County. (The Ranking is pretty sure one of the phone companies is going to pay for an ad here after that free public service mention.) He lit up Riviera CC at 17 under and when his lead was down to one at the par-3 16th, he nearly aced it. The win gets him back to No. 1 in the world rankings and lifts his season earnings to $9.8 million in case anyone outside of LIV is keeping score of that …