Mike Celizic

Have you ever been in love and had to go somewhere for a long time? You think about your sweetheart every day, write letters or emails, call when you can, carry a torch through your journeys.

And then the day when you can return is finally in sight. You count down the days, imagine the joyous reunion and plan for happily ever after. But even as you do there’s a nagging anxiety in the back of your mind. What if she’s changed? What if you’ve changed? What if she met someone else? What if?

Or maybe you’ve owned a classic car, a machine that lifts your spirits every time you climb inside and turn the key and feel the engine’s harmony coursing through your blood. And one day something major breaks — an engine or transmission or the suspension. Parts are hard to come by and putting it back together is one problem after another.

But finally, it’s done. You climb in, tingling with anticipation. You turn the key, slip it into gear, ease out the clutch.

But you can’t enjoy it, not right away, because every nerve in your body is straining to hear if everything is right. When you push the pedal to the floor, you imagine rods flying through the engine block, wheels flying off, U-joints letting go.

In either case, it takes time to rebuild trust and confidence, time to learn if things really are as good as they were before. And sometimes they aren’t. Sometimes, the girl’s found somebody else. Sometimes, the new engine blows a seal or throws a rod. Sometimes, what you once had you can never get again.

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That’s how I feel right now about Tiger Woods. For more than a decade, he was the reason I turned on golf tournaments I would never ordinarily watch. He’s why I got up early to watch Thursday and Friday rounds at the British Open, why I rearranged my schedule during the first two rounds of the Masters just to see him play.

When he left for major repairs to his suspension system after that incredible win at the U.S. Open eight months ago, we knew he’d be coming back. We watched the tournaments, told ourselves that Padraig Harrington and Greg Norman made up for what we were missing. But even as we kept telling ourselves that, even as we marveled at a the Tiger-free U.S. team winning the Ryder Cup, we didn’t watch as much golf as we did when Tiger was around. We didn’t talk about the game as much. It’s not that golf wasn’t worth watching. It just wasn’t as much fun; it wasn’t as compelling.

And now we know the day he’s coming back — Wednesday at the Accenture Match Play Championship. If you’re a golf fan, when you heard that news, you let out an inner yelp of joy, checked the TV schedule, programmed the TiVo.

And then you started to worry. Would he be the same? Has the surgery forced him to change his swing? Has the long recovery thrown his swing off? Will the knee hold up under the enormous torque he inflicts on it every time he swings?

It’s not exactly the same as coming back to a girlfriend or waiting for the car to be fixed. I’ll never feel about Tiger Woods the way I did about my first true love — the one who dumped me after I spent a year in Europe. And watching him play will never be as much fun as beating my Alfa Romeo Spider through the turns of a winding country road.

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But the difference is a matter of degree of emotion. The basic feeling is still the same. It’s the anticipation of a rare pleasure being restored that had been taken away for a long time. It’s the anxiety of not knowing if it’s going to be the same.

At times like this, you hope for the best. You make up movies in your mind in which Tiger gets to the final, hits a bunch of miraculous shots, drains a big putt, pumps his fist, howls at the sky, hoists the hardware.

But you prepare for the worst, try to tell yourself it will take time, try to understand that he — and golf — may never be the same. You hope that isn’t the case, but you know it can be, because for all his heroics, Tiger Woods isn’t really Superman. He’s mortal, and someday age and injuries will catch up with him.

You just hope it’s not now.

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