Testing times on sideline for Tiger Woods at Presidents Cup

It is a sad day for golf when Tiger Woods is relegated to serving as an assistant captain at the Presidents Cup. Cart driver? Asking players if they like mayo or mustard on their sandwich? Say it ain’t so, Tiger. Say it ain’t so.

On Thursday, he wore dark sunglasses and rode in a cart with Patrick Reed’s wife and Jordan Spieth’s girlfriend. He huddled with former U.S. President Barack Obama on the first tee and wore an earpiece and carried a Trackman bag. As one scribe noted, it “looked like a mobile command from The Rock that launches the rockets.”

Woods is resuming the same role he held during last year’s Ryder Cup and that in the past would have seemed beneath someone of his stature in the game. But now, at 41, and after being sidelined from the game for his fourth back surgery and dealing with an addiction to painkillers after being found asleep at the wheel of his car along a Florida highway in May, it is refreshing to see Woods embrace his role as an elder statesmen in the team room and one of four pom-pom wavers for U.S. Captain Steve Stricker.