There will be the odd bleat from the Twitterati of ‘who cares?’, for the rest of us the return of Tiger Woods to competitive golf is genuine box-office news. In this new dawn of elevated events we now have the one player who’s made most of this possible back in the field.
If you don’t think this is big news then it’s worth a reminder that this will be Woods’ first non-Major PGA Tour start since his single-car accident in February 2021. Last year he made three starts, all of them in the Majors, finishing 47-WD-MC, and still walked away with $15m for topping the Tour’s Player Impact Programme for boosting engagement and publicity.
There was the false start at the Hero World Challenge in the Bahamas – a tournament, like this week’s Genesis, that he also hosts – before everyone was sent scurrying to look up what plantar fasciitis meant.
Put simply, it is ‘one of the most common causes of heel pain. It involves inflammation of a thick band of tissue that runs across the bottom of each foot and connects the heel bone to the toes (plantar fascia)’.
Two weeks later he had completed The Match, partnering Rory McIlroy to a defeat to Justin Thomas and Jordan Spieth, before partnering his son Charlie at the PNC Championship.
He would outdrive Thomas on occasion, there were birdies galore in rounds of 59 and 65, good for a tie for 8th spot, as he and Charlie spent the two days ‘walking like penguins’ after his son rolled his ankle beforehand.
Anything post St Andrews had involved riding in a cart, something that Woods would never even consider doing on Tour.
“It’s frustrating because each and every day I have to do it (the therapy) and then on top of that it’s trying to sleep in the damn boot, it’s no fun. My left leg is bleeding sometimes because the boot hits it. I’m grateful to have this limb and it’s mine. It’s not some fake limb.
“As you’ve seen, I can hit golf balls. I can do all that. I can practise at home. I can hit shots around the green. I just can’t get from point A to point B. This off-season hasn’t really been an off-season. I’ve kind of ramped things up. But after this, come Monday, we shut it all down and take care of this foot so that I can ramp up properly.”
(Image credit: Getty Images)
Which leads us to this week. Three days ago, via a very simple 12-word sentence – ‘I’m ready to play an ACTUAL PGA Tour event next week @thegenesisinv’ – it was confirmed that Woods would be back far sooner than most of us had…
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