Tiger Woods / Ralph Ellis / 12 March 2010 / Leave a Comment

Rory McIlroy has helped to increase speculation that Tiger Woods may return to golf sooner rather than later, says Ralph Ellis. So should you bet on him winning a Major in 2010?

So who is the famous golfer on the front of the new PGA Tour computer game who was recently involved in a car crash on their neighbour's property? If you said Tiger Woods, that's half a point, and the easy answer. If you said Rory McIlroy too then you've probably already filled out the form to buy the game when it's released on July 2. (If you missed it McIlroy skidded in the snow and drove onto next door's vegetable patch, and has been dealing with accusations that he's a complete turnip ever since!)

The very fact that EA Sports have chosen for the first time to put an image other than Tiger's on the cover of their best selling golf game shows the uncertainty around the return of the World Number One. With millions of boxes to be shipped worldwide, they couldn't risk relying only on a star who might not be prowling the greens and fairways this year. But, according to McIlroy, it might well have been safe for them to go with the traditional image after all.

The young Ulsterman has been doing his bit out in Florida before the CA Championship to help promote the new game, and he's told the Sun's David Facey this morning that the buzz among the players is that Tiger is on his way back. Word is, he says, that Woods will play later this month at the Tavistock Cup and the Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill.

And there's more detail. "He's got Hank Haney on the range and from the reports I've heard he seems to be swinging it well, as good as he ever was." (Please, no smutty jokes about Tiger's swinging, thank you!)

I suggested a week ago to lay Tiger for No Majors in 2010 when the price had slid to between [1.57] and [1.75], and you can already just turn that market green because the price has jumped to [2.08] to back as the rumours about a Woods return sooner rather than later grow.

There are suggestions that he may have sacked caddie Steve Williams as punishment for his statements that he would have shopped his man for his philandering if he'd known what was going on. And there's word also on the circuit that his manager and close confidante Mark Steinberg has hired former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer to repair the catastrophic damage done to his image. Fleischer was in charge of White House media during President George W Bush's reign and now has his own sports communication business with the motto: "Take control of your relationship with the media."

At some stage Woods, who is clearly determined to rescue his status as the world's number one sporting icon, has got to break cover and he clearly wants to do it in time to play - and win - at The Masters. Even at [2.28] it's not too late to lay him for No Majors this year.

Tiger's on his way back. And it's McIlroy who has let the cat out of the bag!

Five things you might not know about Mark Steinberg

Born in 1968, he studied law at the University of Illinois and played for their basketball team that reached the last four of the College championships. The team's head coach Rod Cardinal remembers his "unflappable nature."

He did work experience for agents IMG during his studies, and was taken on full time when he left college in the team sports and golf division with responsibility for finding up and coming talent.

He got his big break when Annika Sorenstam, who he had signed to the agency, won the 1995 US Women's Open - three years later he was hand picked by Tigeer Woods to be his personal manager.

Despite now running the biggest commercial operation in golf he kept the same small office on the 13th floor of the IMG HQ in New York.

Now head of the 155 people who work worldwide in IMG's golf division, as well as managing Woods, he fiercely defends Tiger's commercial interests. In 2004 he sued a yacht maker who had mentioned in their PR material that they had built Tiger's boat.

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