The game has changed:Tiger woods

The 14-time major winner has not won a title for nearly two years and has dropped to 28th on the world rankings.

With Woods in apparent decline, nine of the last 10 majors have been won by first-time major winners, while on Sunday Scott Stallings became the sixth rookie and 10th first-time winner to win on the PGA Tour this year.

Woods said: "There have been a ton of new faces out here winning golf tournaments - first time winners. So the game is probably switching a little bit.

"There were a ton of years there where Phil (Mickelson), myself, Vijay (Singh), Ernie (Els), Goose (Retief Goosen), Jim (Furyk) were all winning a bunch of tournaments.

"And now there are a lot of new guys, so the game's changing and it's fun to see."

But Woods says his expectations haven't changed and he still expects to win, even though he hasn't played since May 12 and he hasn't won a tournament since November 2009 at the Australian Masters.

Asked what excites him, he said it was a chance to "beat these guys."

Woods' career has stalled due to personal problems off the course and knee and Achilles trouble. He is about to return after a three-month lay-off and added: "I'm just focused on trying to win golf tournaments, that's it."

His return comes on the Akron course where he has won seven times in nine visits and was second and fourth the other two times, but last year finished joint 78th out of 80 on 18 over par.

Woods showed no signs of a limp as he played nine holes of practice at Firestone on Tuesday.

"I'm good to go," he said. "The docs gave me the clearance, so here I am. I started practising a couple of weeks ago, which was nice, and I was close to playing last week, but again the doctors advised me that maybe I should take another week.

"I started pushing it pretty hard (in training) and I feel good now."