The Monster In Blue Monster Is Back, Until It's Not!

Steve DiMeglio encapsulates the early week takeaways on the revamped Trump National Doral heading into round one of the WGC Cadillac Championship, and as they often do, the players are projecting a radically more difficult course from the one they've torched in recent years.

While it's certainly a more thought-provoking design, we've seen this movie before: players declare a course the toughest they've seen, only to light it up if the weather is decent.

Doral's incredible conditioning (especially for just have a few months of grow-in) will also help scoring.

More importantly, the course is more interesting.

Or as Dustin Johnson said succinctly: "It is way harder now."

"The Blue Monster was always a tough golf course. I just think they made it tougher," said Jason Day, who won the WGC-Accenture Match Play Championship two weeks ago. "If we have windy conditions, which we normally do here, then it's very tough."

The greens really caught the eye of reigning Masters champion Adam Scott.

"Obviously there are some big changes to the green complexes," Scott said. "The routing is the same. Most holes have a different look but there are a couple holes that play somewhat similarly until you get to the greens. The greens are much larger with much more undulation, and that's obviously going to be the challenge this week."

The Donald overtook the press conference today that mysteriously included Gil Hanse and the Trump offspring. Golf Central whittled it down to The Donald's most outlandish brags.

Meanwhile, Tiger talked the press about his back, his feels and made a lot of mentions about "we" although I'm not sure who we is! Robert Lusetich on the precarious state of Tiger's back and game as Augusta nears.

Coverage of the WGC begins on Golf Channel Thursday from 1-6 ET. The pairings are based off the World Rankings, so there are some of the best we'll see all year.