Posted
The 46-year-old American has confirmed his participation in the event which takes place on the Augusta course.
Tiger Woods trained for two days on the Georgian course.
AFP
Tiger Woods, five-time winner of the event, announced on Tuesday that he will “play” Thursday at the Masters in Augusta (Georgia), marking his great return to competition, more than 13 months after the road accident which caused nearly cost him his life.
“For now, I’m going to play,” the 46-year-old American said at a press conference on Tuesday. He will test himself one last time on the course on Wednesday.
“It’s about how my body is going to recover from that exertion and what it’s capable of the next day,” Woods explained. He has completed two nine-hole practice sessions in the past two days. On Monday, thousands of fans were there to cheer him on.
play to win
And Woods, fierce competitor at heart, does not intend to make up the numbers for his return. “I think I can win the Masters this week,” he said.
Such a feat, which would probably be the most incredible of his career, already punctuated by so many others, would allow him to equal the record of six titles won by Jack Nicklaus. This is despite the fact that he hasn’t played a tournament since the 2020 Masters, postponed to November that year due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
“I can hit the ball very well. I have no doubts about what I can do golf-wise. The walking is the hard part,” he said.
Golf legend, winner of 15 Grand Slam events, Woods was seriously injured in the right leg, narrowly avoiding amputation, in a car accident on February 23, 2021 near Los Angeles.
Woods, was hospitalized for weeks and unable to walk for months. “It was a difficult path to take. To say that I was going to come back here to play then seemed very unlikely to me, ”he said.
(AFP)
