TIGER IS PLOTTING A MAJOR OFFENSIVE
I’ve been gearing up for this says fired-up Woods
TIGER WOODS is fired up again to peak for the Majors – despite a year disrupted by yet another back injury and the Covid-19 pandemic.
The 15-time Major champion goes into the USPGA Championship tomorrow having played only one event since February.
And the 44-year-old, who finished 40th at The Memorial in Ohio last month, admitted the cool temperatures in San Francisco will affect his swing while the lack of crowds is going to be “very different” on the Harding Park municipal course.
After no Major golf for 13 months, the new calendar will see the USPGA followed by the US Open next month and the Masters in November.
But world
No15 Woods said: “I’ve been trying to prepare for the three, trying to figure out my schedule, training programmes and playing prep and the things I need to work on for each
Major venue. It’s just in a different calendar order and different time of year. “This is a big run for us coming up. I’ve been gearing up for this and looking forward to the challenges of not only this week, but the FedEx Cup play-offs, US Open and then the Masters. “It’s just competitively, I haven’t played that much, but I am very enthusiastic about some of the changes I have made and so that’s been a positive.” The four-time USPGA winner arrived for this event in May 2019 as Masters champion – and promptly missed the cut. “I celebrated winning for quite some time, came to Bethpage and played awful,” he recalled.
“My game is better than it was going into that PGA and hopefully I can put it together this week.”
Woods, who spent two years at nearby Stanford University, won the 2005 WGC-Amex Championship at Harding Park and also went
5-0 in the 2009 Presidents Cup at the same venue.
Mark Twain famously said
“the coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco”, and temperatures are not forecast to rise above 23C this week. “I know I won’t have the same range of motion as I would back home in Florida where it’s 35C every day,” said Woods. “That’s just the way it is.The ball never goes very far here.”
Asked if he knows the week before a Major if he is going to win,Woods replied: “There has probably only been two, maybe three times where I knew all I had to do was keep my heartbeat going and I was going to win the tournament.
“In 1997 I felt pretty good at Augusta and then at Pebble Beach and St Andrews in 2000.”
Asked if he could triumph this week,Woods smiled and replied: “Of course.”