The million-dollar question after the Hero World Challenge and the PNC Championship remains unanswered. One can speculate, guess, predict or dream, but the reality is that no one can assure today that Tiger Woods will win another PGA Tour tournament or a Major before hanging up his clubs. Beware, neither that, nor can it be assured the opposite: that Tiger Woods will not win another PGA Tour tournament or a Major. Simply, it cannot be assured because no one knows. Not even Tiger Woods himself.
Starting from this premise, we can move forward in the analysis to reach some more or less clear conclusions. The first and most important is that Tiger, once he has overcome the complicated ankle operation he underwent after withdrawing from the Augusta Masters last April, is in infinitely better conditions than just a year ago after the 2022 PNC Championship. The key is not what we saw at the Hero World Challenge or at the PNC Championship, more or less good shots, better or worse putts, more or less fine approaches, more or less brilliant bunker shots, longer or shorter drives… No, the most important thing is what happened between the two tournaments, from the Sunday that the competition ended in Bahamas to the Saturday that it started in Florida. Twelve days.
Tiger says: “The most encouraging thing after Bahamas is that the day after playing I was able to train. We have trained every day since the Hero and we have been able to recover well to be able to train again the next day. The ankle is no longer a problem because it is fused, but there are other things that hurt quite a bit because of the compensation, but as long as I can train, we are fine”. Hold on because there are curves coming. If this is the case, no one can dare to doubt that Tiger Woods will once again have a chance to win a tournament and a Major.
In fact, the golfer from Cypress is convinced today Monday that he can win again. He is convinced because he has seen that he can train. Not as much as he would like, of course, but enough to be competitive. The problem is that no one knows, neither the doctors nor Woods himself, what his body can hold in the coming months. This would be playing the fortune teller. Will he withstand the training grind he wants to put himself through? Or will leaks start to appear here and there and he will be forced to stop every so often? This is the doubt. Last year he was not in a position to be competitive because he could not train. Recoveries after playing a round were slow and very painful. He had to stop for days between sessions. But now the horizon is different. Many things hurt because he is in the umpteenth reinvention of his swing, his body is adapting to hitting the ball in a different way. And this is going to be the great legacy that Tiger leaves to the sport: the gigantic capacity for sacrifice and suffering to recover from adversities and continue competing.
Woods has no doubts today. “If I am able to train and prepare as I know I can prepare to compete, I know I can win again. I have the shots. I have the distance. It’s just a matter of preparing and doing enough repetitions. Work hard enough, be physically well and have the endurance to do all that. I know I can do it. The challenge is to achieve it over 72 holes”. The most important conclusion after the Hero and the PNC is that Tiger knows he can be competitive as his body is right now, no matter how much it has changed with the ankle fusion. Now the most crucial thing is to know if his body will hold up long enough.
Just the hope that it can be so, is one of the most important news in world golf looking at 2024.
