Woods ready for return

2009-02-23

Share this article:  Digg |  StumbleUpon |  del.icio.us |  Reddit

By Simon Lewis
PA SportsTicker Contributing Writer

MARANA, ARIZONA (TICKER) —Tiger Woods said Tuesday he is 100 percent and stronger than ever as he prepares to return to competitive golf following eight months out of the game.

The world’s top-ranked player, Woods makes his return from reconstructive knee surgery on Wednesday when he tees it up at the WGC-Accenture Match Play Championship.

In his last performance before undergoing surgery to repair a torn left ACL, Woods provided plenty of dramatics as he beat Rocco Mediate in a playoff to win the U.S. Open in June. Woods completed the memorable triumph at Torrey Pines despite also suffering a double stress fracture of his left tibia.

After eight months of rehabilitation, however, the 14-time major winner said he was back in business.

“It’s great to be back,” Woods said after completing a practice round at the Ritz-Carlton Golf Club. “I feel a lot stronger in my left leg. Both legs have been stronger than they ever have been.

“Stability is something I haven’t had in years. So it’s nice to make a swing and not have my, as I’ve said before, my bones move. Since I had no ACL, I had a lack of ACL for a number of years, no matter what I did, it was always moving. So I would try and hit into my left side, but the more I did it, the more it would move, so hence one of the reasons why you saw me jumping off the ball is to get off that leg. It’s nice to be able to hit into it for the first time.”

Woods said there has been no change in his golf swing, rather he is able to execute his existing swing better.

“As far as my golf swing, I’m doing the same things I’ve been trying to do, but now I have a leg I can do it on,” he said.

Woods was asked whether the 2006 U.S. Open at Winged Foot, his first tournament back after more than two months out following the death of his father, had been the only occasion he had not felt 100 percent ready and hadn’t thought he was going to win.

“That was the only one,” he replied.

That will be bad news for Australia’s Brendan Jones, the 64th and lowest-ranked player in the field, who must face Woods in the first round Wednesday.

Furthermore, Woods said the match play format would make it easier for him to rediscover the rhythm of playing tournament golf, the one thing that he felt uncertain about heading into his comeback.

“You need to find that rhythm quickly and get into the flow,” Woods said. “Obviously I think match play helps that because it is basically like playing the final round of a tournament from the very first hole each and every match.”

Woods, the defending champion and three-time winner of the WGC-Accenture, said he was looking forward to getting back on that first tee, which comes for him at 12:46 p.m. local time. He also wants to forget about the frustrations of being sidelined.

“I miss that rush of playing and competing, I really do, getting on that first tee and feeling it. I miss that,” he said.

“As much as you can have money games at home with the guys, it’s not the same. This is what I do for a living, and this is what I’ve always wanted to do my entire life, and not being able to do it at the highest level was frustrating at times. It wasn’t as frustrating as you might think because I knew I wasn’t physically ready to do it.”

Woods also knew that waiting to return was the right choice.

“As I said when I was at the Chevron World Challenge (last December), I didn’t feel like I was ready to come out here and embarrass myself, and I had to make sure that I felt my game was good enough and ready to compete and win again,” he said.

“That’s what feels good about it, coming back out here and feeling that again.”

There had been one upside about being at home, he said, with his wife Elin, young daughter Sam and, for the past two weeks, with his newborn son Charlie.

“It actually felt great to get away from it, be with Sam and E and watch her grow,” Woods said. “I would have missed a lot of that. So I was able to be a part of that.

“That’s something that - it was a blessing in disguise to have an opportunity just to see Sam grow that fast and that much. As players you travel so much that I would have missed a lot of that, so I was very lucky there.”