The 49-year-old had disc replacement surgery in October but has only just been cleared to start chipping and putting.<\/p>\n
He hopes to be able to play in the latter stages of the TGL, the indoor simulator made-for-television event, which finishes in early March, but has not yet considered when his outdoor season will begin.<\/p>\n
Woods turns 50 at the end of the month, meaning he qualifies for the PGA Tour Champions season, but the 15-time major winner has not made any commitments on that front yet.<\/p>\n
“It’s not as fast as I’d like it to be. It was a good thing to do, something I needed to happen; it just takes time and dedication to the rehab process,” said Woods of his recovery.<\/p>\n
“Unfortunately, I’ve been through this rehab process before, and it’s step-by-step. Once I get a feel for the recovery process, I can decide where and when to play.<\/p>\n
“Let me get back to playing again, let me do that, and I’ll figure out the schedule. I was cleared to chip and putt last week.<\/p>\n
“It’s been six weeks [since the operation], and it’s been slow.<\/p>\n
“You can’t really do much with a disc replacement, now we have the OK to start cranking it up in the gym and start strengthening.”<\/p>\n
Asked why – at his age with his injury history – he wanted to make yet another comeback, Woods, who is tournament host for this week’s Hero World Challenge in the Bahamas, added: “My passion to just play, I haven’t done that in a long time, and it’s been a tough year.<\/p>\n
“I’ve had to sit on the sidelines for a number of months of this year and the end of last year. I’d like to come back to just playing golf again.”<\/p>\n
Woods has not played in a tournament since the 2024 Open at Royal Troon, and during his lengthy spell on the sidelines, he has taken a greater role in shaping the future of the game, becoming chairman of the PGA Tour Future Competition Committee.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The 49-year-old had disc replacement surgery in October but has only just been cleared to start chipping and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":323201,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[64,63,755,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-323200","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-golf","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323200","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=323200"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323200\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/323201"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=323200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=323200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=323200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}