Albany, Bahamas – 28 November 2018: Tiger Woods may have lost his swagger to back surgery and a fused lower spine. But not his belief. The 42-year-old is busy working up a modest schedule, unlike his rediscovered ambitions for success. Over the past season, Tiger has leapt from one tree to another as he scaled quickly up the ladder. Ranked 1199 at the start of the Hero World Challenge, Tiger has a realistic chance of breaking inside the top ten with a good result this week.
The 42-year-old will expect to nail a good performance this week to go into Christmas feeling good and ready to attack wherever he plays next in the 2019 season. Tiger and his team have confirmed their participation for the four majors and the Genesis Open, another event hosted by the Tiger Woods Foundation. The event in Albany offers Tiger an opportunity to make statement to his peers at the top of golf, serving a warning ahead of the new year.
Tiger understands he isn’t getting any younger. He is happy to calibrate his schedules and be more conservative after enduring a very busy ending in 2018. Woods played seven of nine events in a stretch there and even though he was happy to see his body hold up, it isn’t the kind of risk he might take again.
“The thing is this year I was hoping to play major championships this year. Well I did that. On top of that I challenged in two and I led in one. I’m like okay, that’s a lot more than I thought I would get at the beginning of the year. Next year, obviously the expectations have changed. I would like to win one, there’s no doubt. And we are going to three venues that I have won on and I’m looking forward to that challenge,” said Tiger Woods.
“Now the challenge for me is trying to build a season around having enough prep time, enough time for me to relax. I’ll be 43 next year, I wish my body felt like it did at 23 but it just doesn’t (smiles). It just doesn’t bounce back like it used to, so I got to take that into account and obviously my training schedule and being ready for the biggest events and that being the major championships.”
During the Pro Am, which he played alongside Mr. Pawan Munjal, the Chairman of Hero Moto Corp, Woods played some clean golf. He kept his ball on the fairways and found nearly all the greens in regulation to sound the bugle for an exciting week of action.
Live Blog – By Anand Datla
