Tiger Woods Rules Out a Full-Time Return to the PGA Tour

Ad Blocker Detected

Our website is made possible by displaying online advertisements to our visitors. Please consider supporting us by disabling your ad blocker.

Tiger Woods Rules Out a Full-Time Return to the PGA Tour

Tiger Woods hopes to engage in on the PGA Tour all over again, even though by no means as a entire-time participant, anything he known as “an regrettable reality” that he has approved, according to a 30-minute movie job interview with Golf Digest posted on the internet Monday.

“I consider some thing that is practical is participating in the Tour a single working day — hardly ever full time, ever all over again — but choose and opt for, just like Mr. Hogan did and you engage in around that,” Woods, 45, mentioned, referring to the nine-time significant winner Ben Hogan, who played sporadically, if successfully, just after breaking various bones in a devastating 1949 auto crash. “You practice all over that, and you gear by yourself up for that. I consider which is how I’m going to have to enjoy it from now on. It’s an unfortunate actuality, but it is my truth. And I understand it, and I take it.”

On Feb. 23, Woods sustained open up fractures of both the tibia and the fibula in his proper leg in a one-automobile crash outside Los Angeles. The fractures have been described as comminuted, which intended the bones have been broken in numerous sites. Soon after undergoing emergency operation, he was hospitalized for three weeks. In that time, Woods reported, he faced the possibility of obtaining his appropriate leg amputated.

The law enforcement established that Woods was driving about 85 m.p.h. in a 45 m.p.h. zone on a winding highway when he shed command of his activity-utility car or truck. He was not billed with any lawful violation.

“There was a point in time when — I would not say it was 50-50 — but it was damn in close proximity to there if I was likely to wander out of that healthcare facility with 1 leg,” Woods reported in the video clip of a Zoom interview, which commenced with the smiling golfer striding toward the digicam without having a visible limp, inside of his South Florida property.

Woods, who has had a number of again functions, like a fusion in 2017, returned to expert golf and won the 2019 Masters, his 15th big championship, a comeback Woods referenced on Monday.

“After my back fusion, I experienced to climb Mt. Everest a single additional time,” he reported. “I experienced to do it, and I did. This time all-around, I really do not feel I’ll have the human body to climb Mt. Everest, and that’s Ok. I can even now take part in the video game of golfing. I can nonetheless, if my leg receives Alright, I can continue to simply click off a match listed here or there. But as significantly as climbing the mountain all over again and obtaining all the way to the prime, I really do not feel that is a real looking expectation of me.”

He included: “I don’t have to contend and perform against the finest players in the earth to have a fantastic daily life.”

On Tuesday, Woods will make his initially official general public visual appeal given that the crash, attending a information meeting at the Hero Entire world Challenge, a 20-guy match in the Bahamas that gains Woods’s foundation.

On Monday, he explained the stages of his rehabilitation more than the previous nine months. A single of his initially reminiscences just after the crash, Woods explained, was of inquiring for a golfing club that he held in his palms though in the healthcare facility. Later on, he invested 3 months confined to a hospital mattress, primarily at his property. Future, he was able to move all-around in a wheelchair, then on crutches and inevitably in a strolling boot.

“I’ve experienced some tricky days and rough setbacks,” mentioned Woods, who believed his recovery would be swifter. “But I maintain progressing and I’m equipped to walk once again.”

Woods past week posted a a few-next movie of himself swinging a brief iron on a exercise selection, but he cautioned that he was nowhere around completely ready to enjoy aggressive golf.

“I have so significantly to go,” Woods stated. “I’m not even at the midway level. I have so a lot extra muscle progress and nerve growth that I have to do in my leg. At the exact time, as you know, I’ve had 5 again operations, so I’m getting to offer with that. As the leg receives much better, at times the back again may well act up.”

In the course of the movie job interview, Woods appeared to invest additional time conversing about his 12-year-outdated son, Charlie, than any other topic. Charlie has been taking part in in a succession of junior golf activities, with Woods in attendance these days. The two have also put in time in chipping and placing contests at a follow facility. Woods has recommended Charlie on the mental areas of competitive golfing, most notably how to get better from a poor hole.

“I claimed, ‘Son, I really do not care how mad you get. Your head could blow off for all I care, just as extended as you’re 100 percent fully commited to the next shot,’” Woods claimed. “That’s all that matters. That upcoming shot must be the most crucial shot in your life. It should really be extra vital than respiration. At the time you realize that idea, then I consider you are going to get superior. And as the rounds went on during the summer season, he’s gotten so significantly better.”

Throughout the online video, Woods was upbeat and even jocular, while he was additional really serious when talking about the subsequent methods in his rehabilitation.

“There’s a good deal to search ahead to, but a large amount of tricky work to be done,” he mentioned. “And I have to be affected individual and development at a speed that is intense but not over the major.”

He extra: “It’s been a tricky road, but to get on this side of it is amazing.”