Neil MCLEMAN

had not even been born. But Woods admitted: “I don’t feel as good as I would like to feel.that’s okay. I expected to be sore and not feel my best for sure.

‘‘It’s the combination. I can walk this course. I can put on tennis shoes and go for a walk, no problem. But going ballistically at shots and hitting shot shapes off of uneven lies, that puts a whole new challenge to it.”

Woods was 21 when he won his first Major here with a long, powerful swing which he developed with coaches Butch Harmon, Hank Haney and Sean Foley.

He was forced to adapt again under Chris Como after his first major back surgery in 2017 and he won the 2019 Masters. Now playing with plates and screws in the leg he nearly lost in the accident,woods admitted he has had to change his swing “a lot” to compensate.

“I can’t do much,” said the former world No.1. “The ankle is not going to move. I got rods and plates and pins and screws and a bunch of different things in there. It’s never going to move like it used to.

‘‘The more important thing is the ankle is always going to be an issue. But, more importantly, if I play golf ballistically it’s going to be the back. It’s fused. So it’s the levels above and below that are going to take the brunt of it.

“If I can’t push off, I can’t rotate as well. Fortunately, I’m still generating enough speed. My ball speed is at 175-ish when I hit it good, so that puts shearing on the back.

‘‘I already had back issues going nto this, and now this kind of just compounds it a little bit.”