After spending time with his big hero at a recent event, Collin Morikawa confirmed Tiger Woods can still play all the shots, but again repeated the theory that his pride and ego is preventing him from making his life easier and using a golf cart.
Woods is trying to play all four Majors this year, and although he's shown at times that his game can still measure up, the usually simple act of just walking around a golf course in tournament conditions is proving the real issue.
Hitting high cuts, slingy draws and trademark stingers on a flat driving range is no problem, and just his golfing brain would likely see Woods still mix it with the very best on the PGA Tour - but his body just can't keep up.
He's been offered the chance to use a golf cart, and there's not one pro in the game that would begrudge him a set of wheels even in a Major, given what he's done for the game over the years.
There's one person who doesn't want to see the 15-time Major champion use a golf cart though - and that's the man himself, who likely sees it as admitting some sort of defeat.
"His ego's pretty big, you know, as is all of ours," Morikawa said at The Memorial about Woods using a golf cart.
"I just think he wants to keep doing it until he can't, and maybe there's something about a golf cart that's just, you know, ain't it. I would be taking a golf cart if they allowed me. I would love to."
Woods is the ultimate competitor, and still gives out plenty of trash talk to the young guns on the PGA Tour when they're paired together with the 82-time winner, but it's that competitive spirit that's preventing him from making it easier to actually go out and compete again.
It's even more of a shame given that the 48-year-old, despite all the injuries and all the surgeries, still has a lot of his old game - as Morikawa witnessed at the recent Tiger Jam event in Las Vegas.
"I mean, he was making fun of me not being able to hit a draw, so I hit a draw, it was like a five-yard draw," Morikawa said of Woods. "And then he hit a hook and I swear he was aiming like three feet from the line of people that were on the right side."
Two-time Major champion Morikawa says that watching Woods on the range you wouldn't know just what he's been through, but, again, it's the mere act of getting around the golf course throughout a Major championship week that's proving just beyond him right now.
"The skill and the feel is still all there, right? So you wouldn't know. But you add that over time, over 18 holes, over a course of 72 holes, the entire week of prep, look, the guy's been through a lot.
"I'm very lucky to have that opportunity to go and do something like that, to talk to him, to hang out, because you go back and you look at your 15-year-old self, your 10-year-old self and you say, yeah, you're going to go spend a few hours with Tiger playing poker, hitting golf balls on the range, picking his brain, screwing around, like, that's - you know, that's a dream, right? So that's pretty cool."
