Tiger Woods Seen Hitting Balls (Very Lightly) On A Driving Range, Clearest Sign Of Comeback Yet
The golf world was enjoying a relatively quiet Tuesday morning. Sure, the entire European Ryder Cup team is teeing it up at this week's BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth, and the PGA Tour's fall season resumes, but we're in the dead-zone between the Tour Championship and the Ryder Cup. Everyone could pay attention to football without guilt. Golf wasn't really on the mind.
Until, that is, a certain 15-time major champion popped up on our Instagram feeds doing what he does best.
Now, Tiger Woods is not yet able to make full-swings. At least that's what Eastside Golf shared during their live stream from the Nexus Cup, a yearly charity outing at Liberty National in New Jersey that benefits Woods' TGR foundation. But no matter. Woods was on the range at Liberty on Tuesday morning doing a little clinic/Q&A session alongside Rickie Fowler. Golf-wise, he chipped a few balls. (All of them were nippy spinners, obviously). He put plenty of weight on that Inspector Gadget right leg, a hugely encouraging sign after he underwent yet another major surgery in May—this time a subtalar fusion of his right ankle in May—and the clearest sign yet that he does indeed intend to return to compeitive golf.
Of course he does. At the time of the surgery Woods' team shared that the purpose was to get him walking pain-free, which obviously wasn't the case the very few times he teed it up in 2023. He looked solid at the Genesis Invitational at Riviera, but that was on a dead-flat course. It was hard to walk him struggle on Augusta National's hills during the wet Masters week, and few were surprised when he withdrew on Saturday morning facing 27 holes-plus in the cold and rain. A few weeks later news of the surgery dropped and Woods' year was over.
The guy has nine hundred golfing lives. Every time we think he's done, he resurfaces. Woods also famously likes to downplay the progress he's making in his recovery—back in September 2017, at the Presidents Cup, he said he wasn't sure if he'd ever play again. A few weeks later he released a video out of nowhere of him ripping a stinger. A year later he'd won the Tour Championship. Six months after that, he won the Masters.
We've learned by now never to count this man out. I'm on record saying I don't think he'll ever win another PGA Tour event. Of course I hope I'm wrong. Four straight days of walking 18 holes, at 48 years old (his birthday is in December), with a fused back and a right leg full of hardware, trying to beat the Jon Rahms and Scottie Schefflers and Viktor Hovlands of the world will be no easy task. But if there's anyone who can do it...
He also delivered this absolute dagger to the YouTube Golf community.