NEWS » . Instead of having a third line of Pavelski, Torres

NASSAU, Bahamas -- If we had to choose the precise moment Thursday when Tiger Woods really started resembling the Tiger of the good ol days, it wouldnt be the opening drive that found the left rough between two bunkers. It wouldnt be the brilliant chip on the par-5 third that led to his first birdie in 466 days. It wouldnt even be his third birdie of the day, on the seventh hole, the product of a laser-beam approach shot and no-doubt-about-it putt that barely elicited a grin.No, the moment he truly started evoking memories of the guy whos won 14 major championships occurred on the next tee, the par-3 eighth, when his impact through the ball was immediately followed by one of his first audible exhortations during the round.One yard! he shouted, a command he often gave when he was hitting his best shots.The ball listened, nestling just a few feet from the hole en route to a fourth birdie and a share of the lead.Thats when some combination of Woods rustiness and the omnipotent golf gods forced him to collectively pump the brakes during his return engagement to competitive golf.You could insist he appeared very much like a different Tiger of old when he failed to get a delicate chip onto the surface from just left of the ninth green. And when he played army golf on the 11th, after a pulled tee shot left and a pushed second shot right led to a swipe at the turf with his club and an unplayable lie penalty stroke. And again when he hooked his drive on the final hole into the adjacent water hazard, then slammed the driver into the ground before carding his second double-bogey in three holes.By the time hed finished, Woods had turned a 4 under start and share of the lead into a 1-over 73 that left him in 17th place in the 18-man Hero World Challenge field.I just made some really silly mistakes, mistakes I dont normally make, Woods said, before reminding himself as much as anyone else, but I havent played in a while.This was a textbook round for someone who hadnt played in a while: Make a few nervy pars just to ease away the tension; ride the wave of adrenaline up the leaderboard; get overtaken by fatigue down the stretch.If we needed further proof, though, of Woods return to familiarity, it came after the round, when he wouldnt acquiesce to that last observation.He was asked a reasonable question about whether hed run out of gas before making those two doubles.I wouldnt say that, he offered. I just made some mistakes.He was asked a similar question about whether he incurred issues with stamina and again wouldnt relent.No, no, not that, he argued. I just made a couple of mistakes out there.This was classic Tiger, who for years has made a practice of debunking even the simplest opinions of his game. Consider it evidence that the new normal for him might still be pretty normal.Score and result notwithstanding, that should be a main takeaway from Thursdays round. He wasnt doubled over with back pain, nor was he chunking uncomplicated chip shots. The truth is, if you didnt know he was a 14-time major champion and didnt know he was returning from a lengthy layoff, he appeared very much like any other professional golfer playing any round of golf.How quickly I fell into the competitive mode and I felt the feel of the round, Woods said when asked what he was most pleased about. By the time I hit my tee shot on the second hole, I had already gotten into the flow of the round. Thats something that for me, when Ive taken layoffs and taken breaks, its how quickly can I find the feel of the round. Its good to be able to play [for the first time] in, what, 15, 16 months and get it on the second hole.The other takeaway is that this round should provide cautious optimism moving forward. Critical analysis aside, his return to competitive golf should be viewed through a positive prism.Woods often talks about the process. Well, hes only going to get stronger and more comfortable moving forward. This should be seen as a terrific first step in that process.Earlier this week, as a few reporters chatted up Woods on the range here at Albany Golf Club, he struck shot after shot, then finally turned to them and quipped, Im not dead yet.On Thursday, the rest of the world got to see that, too. Andy Greene Jersey . 4 Villanova with a 96-68 drubbing on Monday. Wragge hit 9-of-14 from behind the arc, matching Kyle Korvers school record for 3-pointers in a game set in 2003, as Creighton (16-3, 6-1 Big East broke a conference record with 21 treys in the rout. Jamie Langenbrunner Devils Jersey . LOUIS -- Attorneys for the St. http://www.devilssale.com/authentic-travis-zajac-devils-jersey/ . Each of Houstons starters scored in double figures as the Rockets improved to 2-0 against the Spurs this season, with both victories coming on the road. They also moved within 3 1/2 games of San Antonio (22-7) for the lead the Southwest Division. Martin Brodeur Devils Jersey . -- Running backs Darren McFadden and Rashad Jennings were back at practice for the Oakland Raiders on Wednesday despite being hampered by hamstring injuries. Will Butcher Devils Jersey .S. -- Nikolaj Ehlers registered a hat trick for the third straight game and Jonathan Drouin had a goal and five assists as the Halifax Mooseheads hammered the host Cape Breton Screaming Eagles 10-1 on Tuesday in Quebec Major Junior Hockey League action. Dear Cricket Monthly, Cricket has so often risen above the rigid hierarchies of its birth that sometimes it is easy to forget that it belongs fundamentally to the private realm. If youve grown up seeing a game in every lane around your house - as many across the Indian subcontinent do - you can forget that not every game is a public spectacle. But of late Ive begun to wonder what the world will look like when we dont play gully cricket any more.For the last year, the balding lawn in front of the ticketing offices at Humayuns Tomb in central Delhi has been closed off by high blue boards. Trapped inside are the gully cricketers who once played there every free hour they got. Im joking: in fact, an ambitious renovation plan has evicted them in order to turn the lawn into a parking lot. Presumably nothing else will induce tourists to enter the presence of one of the worlds most beautiful buildings.That lawn is one of the few places in the capital where I saw noodling amateur cricketers noodling about in public at all hours of the day. For 18 months I lived behind the tomb, just outside the crop circle of peace and plenty better known as Lutyens Delhi. Its a trap devised by aliens, but one in which a prisoner from anywhere else in the country would be happy to turn the lock and throw away the key.The ticking clock of the Indian city can be heard even here, as though from a distance: the sound of trains, the call of hawkers, the clacking up and down of shop shutters. The sounds of bat hitting ball are rarer. Children run around with footballs tucked under their arms. (In upper-class India, the cleats go on before, not after, you have learned to play: an unmistakable sign of prosperity but an oddly weaponised one.)In Lodi Gardens, a vast stretch of kindly British landscaping superimposed on a Pashtun mausoleum complex, the eye collides constantly with sportspersons sweating through neon Adidas shirts as they compete with their own respiratory systems, running or skipping rope or cowering before their merciless boot-camp trainers. Three lanes away, golfers commandeer the 220-acre fertile swells of the Delhi Golf Club, another intersection of late Mughal tombs and PG Wodehouse.Most places in India compare unfavourably with this abundance of civilisation, if you like this sort of thing. The film-maker Shyam Benegal enviously wrote of this zone as Gods little acre. It is an admirable state, but it does not bode well for the gully cricketer preparing himself or herself for heaven.I returned recently from this long daydream to Mumbai. Time always passes faster here than elsewhhere.dddddddddddd I expected, like Rip Van Winkle, to have fallen rather badly behind. If theres anywhere in the world where they should start to play cricket in space, its above this town, where the lanes grow thinner and the buildings taller every day. (But no - science fiction too must be manufactured in controlled surroundings. The first antigravity pitch will no doubt be invented in a rooftop lab in Gurgaon, or perhaps in a plastic cell holding N Srinivasan, the Magneto of world cricket.)Space, in any case, is Mumbais weightless, more expedient word for land. Here too cricket is ceding ground. When I left the city in 2013, the pitches in Shivaji Park were already in mixed use. More schools and parents in the citys preeminent cricketing district were accommodating football programmes than ever before. City non-profits promoting leisure and play for lower-income people were steadily choosing football - easier to teach across constraints of gender and purchasing power - over cricket. The hope that Mumbai would soon be a smart city, full of privately owned infrastructure that would open doors and operate vehicles without human intervention, and complete the transformation of labour into capital, was still a pipe dream. But its rhetoric was embedding itself in visions of a future different from the present. It is the task of blueprints to design cities without citizens: under the circumstances, sport can only be imagined if it is decorously incarcerated in facilities and complexes.The streets are not, at present, quite freed up for the march of progress. On my first Sunday afternoon back, I took a slanting, slippery run through my new neighbourhood. It was raining, and the buildings were growing shorter, giving way from the railway and the main streets to quiet roads that sloped down to a fishing village. Even the passing cars sounded squelched and beaten. I ran head down, trying to find the dissolving pavement with my toes.I heard the match well before I saw it: the bitten-off thump of a shot, the heels scuffing between the wickets, the cheers of a ring of men watching a game in a muddy circle between a ring of small houses. I watched as the ball flew off someones bat, shaking the slush off itself, arcing out in the direction of the grey, limitless expanse across the road - the sea. This sport is at least as adaptable as we are: and if we dont become creatures of the air, we will probably learn to play on the water.Yours, Supriya Nair ' ' '