Tiger Woods has revealed that rushing back from injury was one of the biggest mistakes of his career. He lasted just nine holes at The Players Championship at Sawgrass in May, before suffering a recurrence of his troublesome knee and Achilles injuries. And that forced him to miss the US Open and The Open at Royal St George’s.
Those nine holes are the only competitive golf Woods has managed since The Masters – and he had to fight off the temptation to come back too quickly again.
As he prepared to tee off with Open champ and good pal Darren Clarke at the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational, Woods confessed: “I came back and played at The
Players – and if I’d have sat it out probably another week or two, then I would have been playing throughout this stretch. But The Players is a big tournament. I wanted to play in it and probably shouldn’t have. I was getting to where I was good to go and put myself way back again.
It’s frustrating but, unfortunately, I’ve been there before. I’ve had injuries before where I couldn’t play golf. I just had to slowly build up to it. But now I’m ready to go. The doctors gave me the clearance to go, so here I am. I started back practising a couple of weeks ago and I was close to playing last week. But the docs advised I’d want to take another week of training and really start pushing it, so I did. And I feel good now. It was the right thing to do and here I am. I’ve chipped and putted for a while and hit something more than a chip and a putt. But then, as the leg started feeling explosive again, I had the strength to hit a driver.” Woods, 35 said.
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