DUBLIN, Ohio (AP) -- Kenny Perry was needling Tiger Woods as he stood over his plaque injection behind the sure hole, one three-time Memorial Tournament prizewinner dogging another. Then Woods cleanly swept the ball out of the gnarly extreme and it tumbled down the slope, curling into the shanty to the roars of a sturdy crowd. Woods tried to gaze down Perry before his pretence cracked straightforward in a extreme grin, then they slapped drunk fives. It was only a humanitarianism skins amusement the daylight before the advantage of the tournament at Muirfield Village, but it was a great conclusion to a memorable day.
Not only did Tiger bearing like the Tiger who dominated golf before his knee surgery in summer, but he was paired with Jack Nicklaus, two of the game's greatest players walking together on a polar and rainy daytime in suburban Columbus. Woods said he's getting healthier each week. "I haven't been able to hit balls as far as I normally do, but that's coming," he said. "Each week I'm able to hit a thimbleful second longer. It's great.
Just a unimportant longer before I'm able to get all of that back." Nicklaus, one fiction watching another, said Woods was attacking the path congenial he did before his operation. "I little his libration was a lot more combative today than I've seen it in former tournaments on television," said Nicklaus, the Memorial's founder, advance plotter and host. "I mental activity he has been babying his lap a microscopic bit. That's rightly so. That's what you would expect.
I didn't show much babying today; I thoughtfulness he went at it unbelievably good." Woods enjoyed his space with Nicklaus, the musician whom he has sedate his own rich hurtle against. Now 69, Nicklaus is 23 years removed from his 18th and finish dominant championship. That unmitigated has become Woods' reverential grail.
"You could accompany it on certain holes, certain shots, him kindly of revert back to the old Jack," Woods said. "It was ingenious to see." Woods leads an elite 120-player reply to into the meeting that Nicklaus created in 1976 and has nurtured through his superior competitive years and now in his dotage. Major champions fleck the starting grid: Padraig Harrington, Zach Johnson, Ernie Els, Mike Weir, David Love III, Vijay Singh, Jim Furyk and Geoff Ogilvy to each others. But Woods is still the central point, markedly with the U.S. Open at Bethpage Black looming just two weeks away.
Woods is coming off a three-week suspension from the tour. No one would discern it if he were "struggling" with his mayhem comeback. After getting knocked out in the newer orb-shaped at the Accenture Match Play, he's been in the apogee 10 in his up to date five starts, including a net at the Arnold Palmer Invitational. In his keep on start, at The Players Championship, he was eighth.
He gone the day off with his pedigree - and also pooped a lot of opportunity hitting balls and honing his match for the senior beat in almost a year. "That's been one of the great things of being vigorous enough," he said. "I'm able to get back out there and carry out on my game." For the record, Nicklaus hit a 6-foot birdie putt on the substitute recess to carry off two skins.
Woods' chip-in on the last slum gave him the certain skins, with all the money from the eight players donated to The First Tee. "A lot of forebears were out there today," said Nicklaus, assessing the gallery. "On a hour for instance today? I seem you I wouldn't have been out there - not even to peer at Nicklaus and Tiger!" But the jam simply ratiocination it was worth the opportunity to see the two icons together. Stewart Cink, a last sub in the same foursome with Nicklaus, Woods and Perry, drew an conspicuous parallel.
"Whether it's on Wednesday for a beneficence tomfoolery lifetime or on Sunday of a bigger championship, they both just lock in," Cink said, shaking his head.
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