Tiger Calls Haney, Hints He's Ready to Go Back to Work

Last week, Tiger Woods hinted that his return to the PGA Tour would be contingent on the birth of his second child. And now that Charlie Axel Woods has safely made his way into this world, it sounds like Tiger is plotting his return to competitive golf.

In fact, Woods had coach Hank Haney on the horn some 24 hours after Charlie was born, asking "When you coming back down here?"

Via Golf.com's Art Stricklin:

Haney, who relayed the story to me in Dallas on Tuesday, spent much of January and part of December working with Woods at Isleworth in Orlando, Fla. Haney said he would return to Orlando later this week to resume his work with Woods.

Normally, this is where I'd make some obvious observation about how Eldrick's return is bad news for the rest of the field because they're all back to fighting for second place. But it's not like guys have exactly been living it up in Tiger's absence. Two of golf's best players, Phil Mickelson and Anthony Kim, have struggled early in 2009 (Philbert somehow missed the cut at the FBR Open and Kim just fired an opening round 78 at the Malaysian Open).

That's not to suggest Phil, Anthony and the rest of the tour are doomed, it's just to point out that eight months without Tiger didn't result in a windfall of first-place trophies for anybody other than Padraig Harrington. That said, a Tiger-less, parity-filled tour isn't nearly as interesting as the tour with him as the favorite to win every time he tees it up. It's not even close, really.