AUGUSTA, Ga. — Approaching 14 months because the automotive wreck that led docs to weigh a leg amputation, Tiger Woods stated Tuesday that he supposed to play within the Masters Match.
Woods, who has gained the occasion at Augusta Nationwide Golf Membership 5 instances, had signaled in current days that he would maybe be a part of the sphere within the event, which is able to start on Thursday. However his announcement, throughout a information convention at Augusta on Tuesday morning, represented essentially the most definitive public step towards a return to the trials of competitors on his sport’s most spectacular, tradition-bound levels.
“As of proper now, I really feel like I’m going to play,” Woods, 46, stated on Tuesday. Requested whether or not he believed that he might win his sixth inexperienced jacket at Augusta on Sunday, Woods replied, “I do.”
“I really like competing, and I really feel like if I can nonetheless compete on the highest stage, I’m going to,” stated Woods, who later added that he wouldn’t “present as much as an occasion until I believe I can win it.”
Woods stated he had no misgivings about his potential to play the sport. The concern, he stated, was the topographical perils of Augusta and the calls for of the 72-hole event: “Strolling is the exhausting half.”
Woods is scheduled to start the primary spherical at midmorning on Thursday, when he’s anticipated to play in a bunch with Louis Oosthuizen, who completed second on the Masters in 2012 however has by no means gained at Augusta, and Joaquin Niemann, who tied for fortieth ultimately 12 months’s event.
Woods, who stated he would navigate 9 holes on Wednesday earlier than the event’s formal begin the subsequent day, performed follow rounds on Sunday and Monday at Augusta Nationwide, the second with Fred {Couples} and Justin Thomas. Woods was limping extra noticeably on Monday than on Sunday. He walked up the numerous hills slowly together with his gait barely extra inhibited.
{Couples}, a longtime good friend and a frequent practice-round companion of Woods’s for greater than a decade, stated that strolling 72 holes of hilly terrain throughout a four-round event would most probably current the largest problem to Woods.
“It’s concerning the strolling,” {Couples} stated. “It’s brutal to stroll, and to go try this after what he’s gone via — no matter it was, 14 months in the past — and to be enjoying in the present day?
“You may at all times be in ache, proper. He’s form of a troublesome man. He’s by no means going to let you recognize he’s in ache.”
General, {Couples} was impressed with how Woods performed.
“He regarded phenomenal,” {Couples} stated. “He drove it actually, very well, like a machine. His irons had been good. He’s Tiger Woods, so in fact, he is aware of the best way to putt. He’s simply unreal. If he can’t overdo it. If he simply doesn’t get too amped up, which is simpler stated than accomplished.
“But when he can stroll round right here in 72 holes, he’ll contend. He’s too good.”
Woods has been present process arduous rehabilitation on his surgically rebuilt proper leg since his sport-utility car tumbled off a Los Angeles-area boulevard at a excessive velocity on Feb. 23, 2021. He sustained open fractures, in a number of locations, of the tibia and the fibula in his proper leg. He spent a month within the hospital, and docs had thought-about the chance that his leg might need to be amputated.
However Woods, who gained his first Masters title 25 years in the past, in 1997, has fastidiously managed expectations — of the golf world and, maybe, of his personal — for a return to the PGA Tour at a number of factors because the crash.
“I’m nonetheless engaged on the strolling half,” Woods stated in mid-February, in his first public look because the crash. “My foot was a little bit tousled there a few 12 months in the past, so the strolling half is one thing that I’m nonetheless engaged on, engaged on power and growth in that. It takes time.”
Woods’s final look in a PGA Tour sanctioned occasion was on the 2020 Masters, which was performed in November fairly than April due to the pandemic. At that occasion, Woods struggled and completed tied for thirty eighth. But it surely was the 2019 Masters, his first main event victory in 11 years, that will make any problem — even competing on this 12 months’s Masters — appear potential.
After present process a number of again and knee surgical procedures, Woods was not thought-about a severe contender that 12 months, but via the ultimate spherical he performed his greatest golf, birdieing three of the ultimate six holes to win his fifth Masters title.
