Augusta, Ga. – Unlike any other for Tiger Woods, a comeback could begin in the Masters.
Woods has suffered so much damage to his right leg for more than 13 months now that he has said doctors are considering amputation, he tweeted that he was heading to the Augusta Nationals on Sunday without deciding whether to play.
“I am going to Augusta today to continue my preparation and practice. It will be decided in the game whether I will compete or not, “Woods wrote.
The Masters does not have a fixed deadline for committing like a regular tour event. This is an invitational tournament, and players usually inform the club if they do not plan to play.
T Bar is published on Tuesday.
If Woods decides to play – he played 18 holes at the Augusta Nationals five days ago – it will be his first competition against the best players in the world since November 15, 2020, when the Masters moved to Autumn due to an epidemic.
Woods was recovering from fifth back surgery in early 2021 when, on February 23, two days after presenting the trophy at the Genesis Invitational held in Riviera, he crashed his SUV on a sidewalk on a coastal road in Los Angeles and the car crashed into a hill. Fell.
Police estimate he was traveling at a speed of at least 84 miles per hour for 45 miles.
Doctors said Woods broke the tibia and fibular bone of his right leg in multiple places. These were fixed by a rod to the tibia, while combinations of screws and pins were used to stabilize additional injuries to the ankle and foot.
Woods said he spent three months paralyzed in a makeshift hospital bed set up at his Florida home. Only then could he begin to move on crutches, and he was finally able to walk on his own.
Woods won the US Open in Torre Pine in 2008 with a double stress fracture in his left leg and a torn knee ligament. He returned from a scandal in his personal life and became number one in the world.
Nothing was more surprising than the Augusta National three years ago when he won the fifth green jacket after four back surgeries that scared him he would never walk again.
Even the fact that he is thinking of playing in this Masters is remarkable in his own right. If he can, the questions are sure whether he can win.
One week before Thanksgiving, he posted a three-second video that contained two words: Progress. Two weeks later at the Heroes World Challenge in the Bahamas, hosting a holiday event called Woods, he was behind the range hitting drivers in Albany.
The first big surprise came two weeks later when he played the PNC Challenge, a 36-hole scramble on a flat course in Florida. Woods was allowed to ride in a kart, a point he made when there was intense observation about the state of his game. She and her son were in second place when John Daly and his son birded the last hole.
“There’s a lot of work to be done to get where I think I can complete against these people and stay at a higher level,” Woods said that day.
Addressing the condition of his right foot in February, Woods said it “changed” and “my right foot doesn’t look like my left, put it that way.”
The importance of last week’s practice round was for Woods to make sure he could walk 18 holes in the turbulent terrain of Augusta National and be able to recover in the days that followed. It’s a good sign he’s coming back on Sunday.
Will he be able to win again? This would be considered more impossible than winning his last Masters.
Woods has played the Masters 21 times as a professional, and is the only major where he has never missed a cut.
In his last competitive round at the Augusta Nationals, he scored the highest score of his career – Rice’s Cricket hit three balls to par-three a 12 on the 12th hole – birdies in five of the last six, including just the last four. In a row