On Thursday golf will stop for the umpteenth time. Once again the eyes of the world will be focused on Tiger Woods, at his umpteenth return to the race after yet another forced stop. The accident of February 23, 2021 in Los Angeles shortened his competitive career but certainly did not diminish his aura of legend one iota.
Tiger Woods will play The Genesis Invitational, a $20 million PGA Tour competition from February 16 to (hopefully) 19. The tournament takes place forty miles from Woods’ residence and, ironically, Tiger has never won on the path of Pacific Palisades.
Tiger Woods, schedule
The 47-year-old returns to the field on the PGA Tour almost three years after his last competition: it is in fact since the 2020 Zozo Championship that the world’s top circuit has not had the honor of having the strongest golfer of the last thirty years on the starting tee.
Since then, between back problems and that dramatic car accident, Woods’ outings have been sipped. In 2022, the Californian announced his intention to continue playing but no longer at the pre-accident pace. Tiger must carefully choose the few races to enter.
So last year he only played three Majors (overcoming the cut to Masters and PGA Championship) effectively stopping from the Open Championship in July onwards. The only appointments on the course were the PNC Championship with his son Charlie and The Match, always using a golf cart.
Possibility, that of playing on the PGA with the help of the golf cart (subject to authorization), never taken into consideration by the 47-year-old from Cypress Hill. The return to The Genesis Invitational is full of meanings.
That Californian race, according to many, is where it all began and (perhaps) where it all ended. On the 18 holes of the Riviera County Club in Pacific Palisades a promising Tiger Woods made his 16-year-old debut on the PGA Tour as an amateur in 1992.
And returning from the Riviera in 2021 Woods (where he was present as a testimonial) went off the road, risking his life. For the record: Tiger Woods today is number 1,294 in the world ranking and has won eighty-two times on the PGA Tour (like him only Sam Snead).
