Tiger Woods was 100 yards from a pin in the right-hand corner of the 11 green at Albany, Bahamas on Saturday. He used this shot to tap in for a birdie, pull the string and then move to the next.
Woods lofted a sand-wedge shot into the breeze. Woods had hit this shot hundreds of times, but for the first in a very long time, he thought he took 3 1/2 steps too far. The ball landed over the green. Death. Death.
Woods admitted that it was a difficult shot. It was going to be blown away in the wind, so I had to run. I tried to hit it pin-high and missed by about three and half steps.
Woods found optimism after his round.
Tiger recovered from a shaky bogey – bogey start with four birdies in the next seven hole. On the back nine, he shot 1-under-par 71 after making a birdie. After a seven-month break from competitive golf, two days in a red figure isn’t bad.
Tiger is aware that statistics don’t always lie. This time, they didn’t. In SG Approach and SG Putting, he has a negative Strokes gained against the field for all three rounds. He is ranked 20 the for SG Approach (and 19 the when it comes to proximity) and 19 the for SG Putting. It doesn’t seem too bad, except that the Hero field is 20 players. It’s not very Tiger-like to be last on the green when one of the greatest iron players ever played. Is it just rust or something else? Maybe. It suggests that he will need to do more practice to be ready for the majors by 2024. Albany is usually a birdie fest, so he will need to be sharper. He’s been unable to move forward on his back nine. He is 6 under par on the front, but 6 over par on the rear, which is usually the more difficult side. This suggests that he could be out of gas. Tiger is still in good shape – he is averaging 308 yard off the tee and is pleased with how his body feels. This is a great win for this week.
He said: “I’m excited about how this week turned out. I was able to knock some of the dust off and show myself that I could recover every day. I had done all my training but I added in playing, concentration, adrenaline, and all the other factors that speed everything up.”
Tiger, who had yet another surgery to fuse the subtalar joint (joint below his right ankle) in April and treat arthritis caused by a previous talus fracture (ankle), still walks gingerly, but this week is the best he has looked physically since a long time.
“I could never go from A to B, but I can always hit the ball.” “It’s like night and day,” said the patient. Once the bone-on-bone was relieved by the fusion, he felt it. “I’m not mobile, but I can walk and participate without feeling the same way I did just trying to do this again. That was frustrating. Now I’m able to do it. It’s now a simple matter of getting in the reps.”
When asked if his back was a concern, he replied, “My back hurts everyday.” That’s life. “But I can handle that, it’s no problem.”
