Tiger Woods Says, ‘I Feel Like I Am Going to Play’ the Masters

Nonetheless, Woods conceded that strolling Augusta Nationwide’s hilly terrain for 4 consecutive days will take a look at the recuperative limits of his proper leg, which was surgically rebuilt after his sport-utility car tumbled off a Los Angeles-area boulevard at a excessive velocity on Feb. 23, 2021.

He sustained open fractures, in a number of locations, of the tibia and the fibula in his proper leg, accidents that needed to be stabilized with a rod and with screws and pins inserted into his foot and ankle. Woods spent a month in a hospital and was confined to a mattress at his Florida residence for one more two months.

Requested Tuesday if he had ache whereas taking part in golf, Woods replied: “There’s, every day.”

Woods mentioned he had no misgivings about his capability to play. The concern, he mentioned, was the topographical perils of Augusta and the calls for of the 72-hole event: “Strolling is the laborious half.”

Woods is scheduled to play the primary spherical with Louis Oosthuizen, who completed second on the Masters in 2012 however has by no means received at Augusta, and Joaquin Niemann, who tied for fortieth finally 12 months’s event.

Woods, who practiced briefly Tuesday morning earlier than heavy rain chased the golfers from the course earlier than 11 a.m., mentioned he deliberate to play a nine-hole observe spherical on Wednesday. Woods additionally performed 9 observe holes on Sunday and Monday, the second time with Fred {Couples} and Justin Thomas. Woods was limping extra noticeably on Monday than on Sunday. He walked up the various hills slowly along with his gait barely extra inhibited.

{Couples}, a longtime pal and a frequent practice-round companion of Woods’s for greater than a decade, agreed with Woods that the sloping, uneven contours of Augusta Nationwide would most certainly current the most important problem to Woods.

“It’s concerning the strolling,” {Couples} mentioned. “It’s brutal to stroll, and to go try this after what he’s gone by means of — no matter it was, 14 months in the past — and to be taking part in right now?