PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. — The man sitting behind the podium looked like Tiger Woods, his Nike shirt and signature TW hat dripping with sweat after he completed nine practice holes in preparation for this week’s The Players Championship at TPC Sawgrass.

But when asked to assess his play in 2009 after five events, the answer was hardly Woods-ian.

“Not too bad,” he said. “In the stroke play events, I think I’ve done all right, all things considered.”

For an average PGA Tour professional, winning one tournament with three other top-10 finishes is better than “all right” – especially considering Woods, 33, is 10 months removed from anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction surgery.

But Woods, with 66 career wins and more than $84 million in career winnings, isn’t happy with his game, and the effects of his nine-month layoff are obvious.

His drives are short, his iron play is erratic and he three-putted three times last weekend at the Quail Hollow Championship.

“It’s just one of those things where I haven’t put all the pieces together yet,” Woods said.

His distance off the tee is especially disconcerting. Woods’ average drive of 293.5 yards this year places him 29th on the PGA Tour. In 2005, Woods averaged 316.1 yards per drive.

Throughout his final round at the Masters last month, Woods was consistently out-driven by his playing partner, Phil Mickelson.

And yet, Woods’ results this season have hardly been disappointing. Ninth at Doral, his first stroke-play tournament back from surgery; a dramatic come-from-behind win at Bay Hill; a sixth-place finish at the Masters; and a fourth-place finish last week.

“You can look at it, I hit it all over the place and I didn’t hit my irons that well,” Woods said. “But I wasn’t that far away from winning the golf tournament, as well.”

Course is the star

Even with the strongest field in golf, The Players Championship is among the few tournaments where the biggest star is the golf course.

The Stadium Course on the TPC Sawgrass has a personality all its own.

It is renowned for its island green on the par-3 17th, perhaps the most notorious short hole in golf where players have hit 312 balls in the water over the last five years alone.

The winning score has ranged from a record 24-under 264 by Greg Norman in 1994 to 3-under 285 by David Duval in 1999.

The list of champions is as impressive as any — Woods, Mickelson, Davis Love III, Nick Price, Fred Couples — yet no one has ever repeated as champion.

It can look easy. But it can play hard.

“Exciting,” offered three-time major winner Padraig Harrington, the only player to be runner-up in consecutive years. “What I mean by that is that it’s not a big brute of a course with long, boring par 4s. There’s quite a lot of short, tricky par 4s out there.”

Most people consider The Players Championship as the fifth major, which is why Steve Stricker used “challenging” for his word.

“It not only challenges you physically, but it challenges you mentally,” he said. “It’s like a major. There’s no letup on any hole. On every single shot, you have to be committed.”

TRACKING RYAN MOORE

This week: PGA Tour’s The Players Championship, today through Sunday, TPC Sawgrass, Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla.

World ranking: 163rd.

2009 earnings: $426,739 (81st on the PGA Tour).

Last tournament: Moore made a late bogey and missed the cut at last week’s Quail Hollow Championship (1-over 145), starting his run of playing difficult courses that place a premium on ball-striking precision. In other words, par will mean something over the next six weeks, and right up to the U.S. Open (for which Moore still has to qualify). The Puyallup golfer is 2-for-2 in making the cut at what is commonly accepted as the sport’s “fifth major,” including a tie-for-27th finish a year ago. As far as what to expect from Moore on the famous island-green, par-3 17th, he has not splashed his ball in the water, and is 17th on tour in par-3 birdie conversion (16.2 percent).

Tee time today: 4:20 a.m. PDT with Rocco Mediate and Dean Wilson.

Todd Milles, The News Tribune