Kevin Lamarque / REUTERS

Tiger Woods will return to golf in the most controlled environment possible at the Masters, NBCSports.com contributor Mike Celizic writes.

We can hate this need for control because it’s annoying, not to mention contrived and phony. But it has worked for him. And it’s hard to tell anyone to change a behavior that has been working. Beyond that, it’s senseless; they’re not going to listen anyway.

But you have to wonder if the same behavior and belief system that got him into this mess can continue to work. Woods says he has changed his behavior, but what has he changed, exactly? His former habit of shacking up with women, not his wife? He also says he’s not going to curse and throw clubs as much as he used to, but that remains to be seen. In any event, the desire and need to be in total control remains unchanged.

It has worked for Woods. He has 14 major titles, just four behind his boyhood idol and the all-time greatest, Jack Nicklaus. Tiger has won them by doing things his way and telling anyone offering a bit of friendly advice to eat his Nike-brand undershorts.

His golf skills won’t be judged by what he does at Augusta. If Woods doesn’t win, which is likely, he has all his excuses lined up: no warm-up tournament, so many “distractions” from the media and fans; one of the deepest fields in the game. If he does win, well, we’ll have to invent new adjectives and superlatives to describe it.

But if he doesn’t win, Woods is going to feel more pressure every week to show that he can be a changed man and remain the same golfer. He’s going to have to show he can suffer the slings and verbal arrows of the gallery without letting it affect his game. He’s going to have to show he can still be the greatest golfer on the planet.

If not at Augusta, then somewhere.

And soon.