Tiger Woods watches his tee shot on the twelfth gap throughout the first spherical of the PGA Championship golf event at TPC Harding Park Thursday, Aug. 6, 2020, in San Francisco. (AP Photograph/Jeff Chiu)
Golf icon Tiger Woods posted video of himself hitting balls on Sunday, 9 months after struggling career-threatening leg accidents in a automobile crash in California.
“Making progress,” Woods mentioned within the no-frills caption to the video posted on Twitter.
Making progress pic.twitter.com/sVQkxEHJmq
— Tiger Woods (@TigerWoods) November 21, 2021
The 45-year-old appears comfy, sporting shorts with a compression stocking on his proper leg, which was shattered when the 15-time main champion crashed his SUV in a Los Angeles suburb in February.
Woods’s newest damage drama sparked fears for the way forward for his profession, and Twitter erupted with likes, replies and retweets of his video from followers and golf journalists.
Fellow PGA Tour execs additionally took notice, with three-time winner Max Homa wryly noting the stir Woods’s two-second video would trigger.
“I’m wondering if Tiger and his crew snigger proper earlier than they put up a swing video realizing all the free world is about to lose their rattling minds #golf,” Homa tweeted.
Woods’s good friend and fellow professional Justin Thomas supplied a heartfelt response.
Moments after tweeting how a lot he beloved the eagerness Rory McIlroy displayed on the European Tour on Sunday, Thomas posted together with the Woods video: “However I believe I really like this extra”.
Thomas mentioned in a podcast lately that Woods was “going to attempt” to make a comeback.
“I do know that he’s going to attempt,” Thomas mentioned on the No Laying Up podcast. “I don’t see him ever enjoying if he can’t play effectively. He doesn’t strike me as a man who’s performed at dwelling and he’s capturing a bunch of 75s and 76s and he’s like, ‘OK, I’m gonna give Augusta a do this 12 months’.
“That’s probably not gonna be him, at the very least from my understanding, what I do know of him.”
Woods has returned from career-threatening accidents earlier than. He had spinal fusion surgical procedure in 2017 and after returning to competitors in 2018 gained his fifth Masters title, and fifteenth main crown, on the 2019 Masters.
That sensational triumph at Augusta Nationwide was Woods’s first main because the 2008 US Open at Torrey Pines — the place Woods beat Rocco Mediate in a playoff regardless of enjoying on a damaged leg.
He has undergone a number of surgical procedures on his again and knee over time as a way to prolong his profession and was recovering from one other process on his again to alleviate ache when he crashed in February.
A Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Division probe decided the crash, by which Woods’s automobile flew off the highway and flipped a number of occasions, was attributable to “unsafe” pace almost double the 45 mph restrict.
Woods had indicated in an Instagram put up in April that his restoration was progressing slowly.
In Could, he advised Golf Digest that his present damage rehabilitation “has been a wholly totally different animal” than earlier recoveries.
“This was extra painful than something I’ve ever skilled,” he advised the journal, though there have been indicators of progress that month when a Florida lady posted an image of herself and the celebrity after assembly him in a soccer park, the photograph displaying Woods on crutches however and not using a protecting strolling boot.
Earlier this month a Twitter poster had snapped a photograph of Woods strolling with out crutches.
However Woods has stored a low profile whereas specializing in his restoration.
‘LOVE to see it!’
Golf Digest on Sunday supplied an instantaneous evaluation on its web site of the video, which it mentioned “seems to be shot on the driving vary of Medalist Golf Membership” close to Woods’s Florida dwelling.
The journal picked out Woods’s “uninhibited motion” and mentioned the a number of seen divots “would appear to level to a apply session reasonably than an remoted shot for the digicam.”
For a lot of, nonetheless, the video was trigger not for evaluation however merely for pleasure.
“We LOVE to see it!” learn a put up on the US Ryder Cup crew’s official Twitter account. “Preserve going @TigerWoods, we’re all cheering for you.”
Added two-time PGA Tour winner Tony Finau: “Nice to see the Large Cat again swinging the sticks!”
Homa, Finau and Thomas are amongst a era of golfers impressed by Woods — who has been keeping track of the sport over the previous few months.
He was fast to congratulate Japan’s Hideki Matsuyama on his historic triumph at Augusta Nationwide through social media, noting Matsuyama’s “enormous accomplishment for you and your nation. This historic @TheMasters win will affect all the golf world.”
Woods’s long-distance messages additionally impressed the US crew that throttled Europe within the Ryder Cup in September.
“We knew he was fist pumping from the sofa,” American Xander Schauffele mentioned.
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