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Golf fans rejoice, Tiger Woods is finally set to make his return.
Woods announced Saturday that he will return to play at the 2023 Hero World Challenge, which begins on Nov. 30 and is a tournament which he hosts.
Tournament host @TigerWoods to play in the 2023 #HeroWorldChallenge. He is joined by exemptions @JustinRose99 and @Lucas_Glover_ to round out the field of 20 set to complete at Albany, Bahamas Nov. 30 – Dec. 3 pic.twitter.com/gBsTXGrTVl
— TGR Live (@TGRLiveEvents) November 18, 2023
Woods had been out since April after withdrawing from The Masters due to an ankle injury.
Former PGA Tour player Bill Mallon, who later became a doctor, feared that Woods may never be able to return to competition after the injury.
“What’s a fusion? A fusion is where you take two adjacent bones, that form a joint between them, and fuse them together to form one larger bone, and the joint goes away in the process,” Mallon said of Woods’ surgery. It is done to alleviate pain, usually, although it can be done for instability.”
He then said that the procedure could leave Woods without any range of motion in his ankle.
“With a subtalar joint fusion, Tiger will no longer have any motion @ that joint (after it heals), but in return he will have pain relief. It will limit his motion in his foot and ankle, but fortunately this is in right foot – in his left foot it would likely be career ending,” he wrote.
Thank, Woods seems to have made a full recovery. Whether he’ll be competitive, however, remains to seen.
“He has been practicing quite a bit at his home in South Florida. Having the endurance to walk 72 holes is what Tiger has been focusing on as well. This will be a good test as he navigates a schedule for 2024,” Todd Lewis of Golf Channel tweeted.
The Hero World Challenge is a limited-field event with some of the world’s top golfers. So Woods’ expectations probably won’t be too high. But if he can make it through four rounds with his health, it would be a huge step in the right direction.