Tiger Woods posts first video of golf swing since California car crash
Tiger Woods posted a short video showing him hitting golf balls on a driving range on Sunday, nine months after the 15-time major champion suffered serious leg injuries in a car crash.
“Making progress,” Woods wrote in the caption to his Twitter post, which marked the first time he has been seen swinging a club since the February crash in southern California. In the video, Woods wore a compression sleeve on his right leg, which sustained open fractures in the crash.
The video will boost hopes that the 45-year-old can return to competitive golf after the accident raised doubts about whether he could make another comeback. He previously had to take time out from the sport following a series of injury setbacks, including surgery on his back five times. Woods eventually overcame those injuries to win the 2019 Masters. There, a rejuvenated Woods won his first major championship since 2008 at a time when many believed he was a spent force.
“We LOVE to see it!,” the US Ryder Cup Team official Twitter account said in response to Sunday’s video. “Keep going @TigerWoods, we’re all cheering for you.”
This month, fellow golfer Justin Thomas said he believed Woods would attempt to return to competition.
“I know that he’s going to try,” Thomas said on the No Laying Up podcast. “I don’t see him ever playing if he can’t play well. He doesn’t strike me as a guy who’s played at home and he’s shooting a bunch of 75s and 76s and he’s like, ‘OK, I’m gonna give Augusta a try this year.’ That’s not really gonna be him, at least from my understanding, what I know of him.”
In May, Los Angeles county sheriff Alex Villanueva said that Woods will not receive a citation over February’s crash and blamed the incident on Woods’s excessive speed and loss of control of his vehicle. The sheriff’s department added that drugs and alcohol were not factors in the crash and Woods appeared to be sober when officers arrived on the scene.