Tiger Woods to play with Justin Rose in Round 2

Woods has had two back operations since last playing in August 2015 and, after such a long absence and the injury problems prior to that, he looked nervous at the first tee.

That was clearly getting a little bit ahead of the game, as the subsequent 10 holes revealed.

Tiger Woods teed it up in competition for the first time since the 2015 Wyndham Championship. “I haven’t had adrenaline in my system in a while and having that surge of adrenaline through my system, how much further is this ball going to be going?”

“I made some awkward shots”. But I haven’t played in a while. “The last couple holes I made a couple putts and I was telling Joey I’m going to hit it at least four, five feet past the hole, I don’t care, and they were going about a foot past”.

Tiger Woods came out swinging in the Bahamas, but eventually cooled to the point where he was clawing to stay around in the tournament.

It was a mixed bag on Thursday.

Woods played Thursday alongside fellow American Patrick Reed in often windy conditions to end his longest career layoff after 466 days.

There was the good: A handful of times Woods got up-and-down from tight, grainy spots around the greens.

Berger, 23, who has a single PGA Tour victory to his name, grew up idolising Woods, who turns 41 later this month. “To get up there on that first hole and feel it again and then dumb it down to be able to control it, that was nice”. He played a chunk-and-run to 3 feet to save par, and two holes later hit a flop shot from 40 yards to 5 feet for birdie.

But he flubbed the chip on No. 9 (bogey), had a simple pitch on the 16th that rolled out 30 feet, and his pitch from right of the 18th green hit the pin halfway up, indicating it was too strong. “When he hit it well, it was really, really good, and when you mishit it, it was kind of. they weren’t very good misses”.

He still is working with swing coach Chris Como, whom he brought on two years ago.

Woods recorded four birdies in a six-hole stretch to sit at 3-under-par 33 after nine holes at the Hero World Challenge, a tournament that benefits his foundation at Albany Country Club in Nassau, Bahamas.

For the first eight holes in Thursday’s opening round of the Hero World Challenge, Tiger Woods looked like his old self.

The event is more than flawless for a comeback after so many months out of the game since Woods is the host of the Hero World Challenge and his charity, the Tiger Woods Foundation, benefits from it financially. I was present the last time Tiger rebooted his career at the 2014 Hero World Challenge at Isleworth and the result was disturbing and hard to watch. [Image via Christian Petersen/Getty Images] Several mistakes later, Woods found himself sitting at No. 17 on the leaderboard with a total score of 73.

For the moment, though, we’ve got Tiger Woods back.

In short, there was more good than bad on a day when just finishing was the goal.

Woods looked in great shape in his first outing for nearly 16 months as he followed a birdie at the third with three in a row from the sixth to get into a share of the lead on four under, but he then blotted his card with three sixes – including two double-bogeys over the last three holes.