Woods anticipates less painful return to PGA Tour
Tiger Woods is more confident than ever that his return to the PGA Tour will be different this time.
It’s not so much how he plays, but rather for how long.
“I have no more pain in my back,” Woods said Wednesday in San Diego.
That wasn’t the case a year ago. Woods was coming off the longest break of his career following two back surgeries when he played the Hero World Challenge and showed promise by making 24 birdies against an 18-man field with no cut. But then he missed the 36-hole cut at Torrey Pines, and lasted one round in Dubai before withdrawing with back spasms.
Fusion surgery on his lower back followed two months later, and now Woods is on the same track as he was last year with one exception.
“I was trying to manage the disk and the vertebrae,” Woods said after his pro-am round in the Farmers Insurance Open. “But it’s all finished now. It’s fused, and the quality of life is infinitely better than it was last year at this point.”
He looked just as strong, just as healthy, as he did in the Bahamas last month. Woods began and ended the pro-am with an approach to a few feet for easy birdies.
The real test begins Thursday at a tournament he has won seven times, not including his U.S. Open title in 2008.
This will be only his second PGA Tour event since August 2015.
Woods is known for saying that he shows up at every tournament expecting to win, though time not to mention four back surgeries in nearly four years has tempered his expectations. He concedes he has competitive rust, at least compared with the players he will try to beat.
“I just want to start playing on the tour, and getting into a rhythm of playing a schedule again,” Woods said. “I haven’t done that in such a long time, so I don’t know what to expect. Just go out there and just play. I’m going to grind.”Woods begins on the South Course on Thursday with Charley Hoffman and Patrick Reed. LPGA SEASON TEES OFF >> The LPGA Tour season begins Thursday in the Bahamas, three weeks after the PGA Tour began in Hawaii. The concept of PGA Tour and LPGA Tour winners starting the year together at Kapalua lost traction last year, though it has not been ruled out.
“I think that’s something we’re still interested in,” PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan said.
That starts, however, with Wisconsin-based Sentry Insurance, which took over as title sponsor this year at Kapalua. The focus was on Sentry getting through the first year, so whether it would be interested in hosting two tours was not even a topic.
“That’s something that we’ll continue to talk about as we go down the road,” Monahan said. “And we’ll continue to talk to the LPGA about it if not here, how do we accomplish this at one of our tournaments?” GWAA AWARDS >> Billy Payne, who retired last year as chairman of Augusta National Golf Club and the Masters, has been selected for the William D. Richardson Award for outstanding contributions to golf by the Golf Writers Association of America.
Payne, who promoted golf worldwide by helping launch the Asian Amateur and Latin American Amateur championships, will receive the award April 4 in Augusta.
The GWAA also voted Stacy Lewis as winner of the Ben Hogan Award for overcoming a serious illness or physical disability, and Ernie Els for the ASAP Sports/Jim Murray Award for his cooperation with the media.