Tiger Woods Injury: Updates on Golf Star's Back and Return

Mike ChiariMar 25, 2015

Tiger Woods has been out of action since withdrawing from the Farmers Insurance Open in February due to a back injury, but he announced on April 3 that he will make his return at the Masters.

Continue for updates.

Woods Confirms He Is Ready to Compete

Tuesday, April 7

Woods took to the podium on Tuesday, talking about his return to competition and his recovery process that led to the decision to compete this week, per Golf.com and Bob Harig of ESPN.com:

Earlier, Woods confirmed he is fit for the upcoming tournament, per Sky Sports: "It's been a process. But I'm on the good side now. It's progression. I felt like I had to get my game into a spot where I could compete to win a golf tournament and it's finally there."

Woods to Compete in Par 3 Contest

Tuesday, April 7

The Masters' official Twitter account confirmed Woods will take part in the Par 3 Contest on Wednesday, as the star golfer looks to refine his game prior to the start of play on Thursday. It is the first time that Woods will compete in the contest since 2004, per BBC Sport.

Woods Continues to Practice, Will Play Masters

Friday, April 3

The Golf Channel reported that Woods remained at Augusta to practice on Friday after announcing that he will play in this year's Masters.

Jim McCabe of Golfweek noted that Woods shot a 74 at Augusta in his round on Tuesday, which included five birdies.

On March 31, Woods' agent, Mark Steinberg, confirmed that Tiger completed 18 holes at Augusta and added, "He will advise us as to when he is ready to play competitively", according to Bob Harig of ESPN.com.

Notah Begay: Tiger 50-50 for Masters

Wednesday, March 25

Prior to Woods commenting publicly on his status for the Masters, former Stanford teammate Notah Begay believed his participation came down to essentially a coin flip.

According to Kyle Porter of CBSSports.com, Tiger's friend told 120 Sports that there is "literally a 50-50 chance" that Woods plays at Augusta National starting on April 9.

From Begay's perspective, that is an improvement over where Woods was just a few weeks ago, per Porter.

"Three weeks ago I would have said there was maybe a 1-in-10 chance of him playing at Augusta," Begay said.

Ultimately, Begay believes that Woods needs to focus on himself rather than any outside noise:

"
I think his golf game as a whole is in a great place. I think it was good for him to stay a step back, to reassess a variety of different things and do things on his timeline. I think that's very important. It's easy to get bullied into trying to acquiesce to the media's concerns, or the PGA Tour's concerns, or other people's agendas.
"

There is no question that having the four-time green jacket winner in the field would make things infinitely more interesting.

Woods was nowhere near his desired level of play the last time he competed in a tournament, though, which certainly complicates matters with the Masters very much on the horizon.

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