Tiger Woods aims to bounce back

LOS ANGELES: Tiger Woods plans to stop being so stubborn and start listening to his caddie more as he tries to recover from the worst round of his career over the weekend.

Woods has now had back-to-back poor weekends but his game hit another low on Saturday when he carded a 13-over-par 85 at the Memorial Tournament. “Joey (LaCava) keeps telling me this past week, he kept reminding me, ‘Man, take it easy on yourself, you haven’t played much golf,’” Woods told ESPN.com via satellite as part of the Quicken Loans tournament media day on Monday. “You never played last year and you haven’t played much this year. Tournament golf takes time. I hate to say it when he’s right, because as a player you always want to be right, but he is right.”

Fourteen-time major winner Woods completed four rounds at Muirfield Village in dead last place at 14-over 302. He also endured the shame of playing as a single and having to remove his own flagsticks while his caddie was busy raking bunkers that had swallowed up Woods’s errant approach shots. His best finish this year was 17th at The Masters. He has teed it up just five times in the 2015 season, including a withdrawal from the Farmers Insurance Open in February with back problems.

On Monday, Woods officially fell to 181st in the world rankings and he is 196th place in FedEx Cup playoff points. His low world ranking means he is not eligible for the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational in August and he needs to improve to 125 or better in order to play in the FedEx playoff events. “I am finally healthy enough to do it,” Woods said. “My back is good enough. I am fully committed to playing more golf all this summer. Now I just need to get my ranking up high enough so I can get into some of these events and continue playing.”

Woods started working with swing coach Chris Como seven months ago and has been trying to implement several swing changes to his game. He says it will take more time but insists he is headed in the right direction. “You just don’t go from one to 10,” he said. “We are taking it 1, 2, 3, 4, all the way to 10. I got a lot of work ahead of me. I’m looking forward to it.”