Tiger gets back to golf with questions about head, not body

Assuming he does make the line-up on Thursday, this will be Tiger’s first start since he finished 10th at the Wyndham Championship in August a year ago and it will be interesting to see how the 898th ranked player in the world fares.

With Tiger Woods preparing to return to golf this week after a 16 month hiatus due to injuries, NBC and Golf Channel couldn’t be happier.

The 14-time major victor is the only player in the field this week ranked outside of the top 40 in the Official World Golf Ranking, so he’s slated to face an uphill battle against an elite young field.

But then asked if he had accepted that, Woods laughed and said: “I’ve accepted I’m going to get more”.

“I’m nervous for every tournament I play in, whether it’s after a lay-off, or six in a row, or a major. Thankfully I’m off of those, I haven’t had them for four months and I feel good”. “I want to compete”, he told an ESPN reporter.

While the past three years were nearly a total loss, Woods won five PGA Tour events in 2013, the last year he was healthy enough to play a full season. I thought only if I have a few shots, it’s good enough to get it around. Regardless, it’s going to be odd to see Woods hit anything but a Nike ball.

Proof can be found in all the testing he has done with new clubs and golf balls since Nike left the equipment business in August.

Woods believes he made the right decision in pulling out of the Safeway Open and Turkish Airlines Open saying, “I had waited more than a year, so let’s wait a little more and get it right”.

“I also was discussing that today with “Rosey” (Justin Rose) and he also says he needs to spend upwards of an hour and a half in the gym before he tees-up each day of a tournament given he’s now 36 years of age”.

“And I get to keep playing”, Woods said with a smile.

Woods said: “The most important thing is the ball”.

Woods, whose 79 career PGA titles are three shy of Sam Snead’s all-time record, has not won a tournament since the 2014 Bridgestone Invitational, a World Golf Championships event at Akron, Ohio. He hasn’t been playing brilliantly since the Ryder Cup, finishing down the field in the CIMB Classic and the WGC-HSBC, so I’m staking cautiously but he could very easily improve dramatically after a bit of a break.

You snooze you lose Did Damien Delaney nod off during the final minutes of one of the most epic Prem games ever? I knew Tobie and I were on to something special back when I tried on the first prototype. “I want to compete”.

Should Woods’ fitness wane, or his former stardust fail to materialize this season, the consensus suggests he will walk away from the game, rather than cut a dejected figure trying to recapture former glories. Incredibly, he is now the 861st-ranked player in professional golf. There are numerous sponsor obligations – Hero has one more year on its deal after the 2016 event – as well as all the attention his game is going to receive.