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TIGER WOODS can take two more giant steps on the road to redemption this weekend at Firestone.
Victory in the Bridgestone Invitational would be Tiger's first at golf's elite World Championships since the crash of November 2009.
And should he chalk-up his eighth win in 14 years at Firestone, Woods will return to world No 1 for the first time since October 2010.
Clearly, Tiger has come a long way in recent months, considering he'd slipped outside the world's elite top-50 before last December's watershed victory in his own Chevron World Challenge.
His three first-place finishes on the US Tour this season showed huge promise ... and if Woods got no closer to adding to his 14 Major victories than a tie for third in last month's British Open, a 17th WGC title this weekend certainly would get him all pumped-up for next week's US PGA.
He certainly sounded like the Tiger of old when asked yesterday which he considered better in one year, three Tour wins or one Major.
"It's not over yet," he rapped back with such certainty, the message was clear to the 77 other players in this week's elite field (including Ulster's Rory McIlroy, Graeme McDowell and Michael Hoey).
Mood
Woods is in the mood to turn Firestone into Tiger country once again.
Incidentally, Woods, like Adam Scott and McDowell, stopped off at US PGA venue Kiawah Island on the way to Firestone and found it 'soft' after recent rain.
Ineligible for the Bridgestone, Padraig Harrington warms up for next week's Major at Montreux Golf and Country Club in the Reno-Tahoe Open, an event which couldn't be more different to the PGA.
For a start, Montreux is well over 5,000 feet above sea level and golf balls fly further and behave differently in thin air than they will at the Ocean Course, while the pine forested slopes of the Sierra Nevada Mountains contrast starkly with South Carolina's windswept Atlantic coast.
Even the tournament format is different. For the first time since The International expired in 2006, competitors on the US Tour will play under a Modified Stableford points system.
With two points for birdie, five for eagle and zero for par, the emphasis in Reno will be on attack, even if one point is deducted per bogey and three for a double-bogey or more.
Par is likely to be king at Kiawah in a set-up which better suits the Dubliner's temperament. Harrington must win in Reno or go very close to benefit from this week's exercise.
Bridgestone Invitational,
Live, Sky Sports 1, 7.0
