Tiger Woods returns to competitive golf this week

Like fortune tellers seeking to infiltrate the psyche of their customers to gain some knowledge, those observing his every swing, chip, putt and move made by Woods will aim to discover if his return to golf after a 16 months absence caused by surgery to his back is the harbinger to a second coming.

He planned to return at last month’s US PGA Tour’s Safeway Open in California but withdrew three days before the opening round, saying his game was not sharp enough.

That’s no longer the case. “Nike really got in the zone with me”.

“I’m going to try to do the same thing I always do”, he said at one point. “Thankfully I’m off of those, I haven’t had them for four months and I feel good”.

One year removed from those sobering remarks, Woods, who turns 41 on December 30, will tee it up in the first round of the Hero, an 18-player tournament he hosts and that raises money for his foundation. “But if you win a major, you’re going to want to come back and play”.

“It was a good decision in the end”. I’m gonna do what I can do and put the ball in the correct spots and try and bury these puts and post scores, get myself in that mix come Sunday afternoon. But I finally decided ‘why rush?’ I’ve just had a session where I hit everything. That he is past 40 has hit him, and the American, who has plummeted to 898 in world rankings, laughs and adds, “Oh yeah It has hit me. We all followed each other, watched each other”, he said.

Woods has a new endorsement on his golf bag (Monster Energy) and a few new pieces of equipment, mainly a Bridgestone golf ball, a TaylorMade driver and the old Scotty Cameron putter he used to win his 14 major championships.

Six years and multiple knee and back surgeries later, Woods’ odds are drastically different this week, when he returns to competitive tournament golf for the first time in 15 months.

Love won the Wyndham Championship a year ago in August at age 51, and it could easily have served as a model for Woods – a power player no longer in his prime, not among the biggest hitters anymore, but with enough experience and talent to find a way to score and to win. Woods is still using his Nike VR Pro blades, and he’s debuting the new TW 17 golf shoe.

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For more updates on Tiger Woods girlfriend, stay tuned. But this is a man who has won more than one-quarter of his PGA starts (79 in 313), so his body is likely to give out before his mind.

“As the week goes on, I can give you more detailed answers on where I’m at and the feel that I have, but as of right now I’m still at the beginning stages of that process”, he said.

Woods played nine holes at Albany shortly after he arrived on Saturday.

Woods could not resist his usual mantra that he is here to win, but he acknowledged “that’s going to be a tall order”. Then there is that part of me that is the competitor who wants to beat these guys. However, he insists that walking is now “easy” and he can “run with my kids now”. I don’t want to be out there flat. “And now I am”.