Tiger Woods Appears Stronger Than Ever During Practice Round

Several hundred members of the media stood in the dark, chilly Arizona dessert awaiting the most anticipated return in PGA Tour history since Ben Hogan returned to the tour a year after his near fatal car accident.

Just before dawn broke at around 6:45 a.m., Tiger Woods and Steve Williams stepped onto the driving range and the media scrambled to get a glimpse of Tiger Woods' first public swing since defeating Rocco Mediate at Torrey Pines back in June.

Ironically Phil Mickelson was the only other player on the range when Woods began his warm-up session, displaying a face that portrayed nothing less than the most intense concentration imaginable.

Although Mickelson is coming off an impressive win at last week’s Northern Trust Open and is one of the most likeable characters in the game, not a single member of this massive media contingent was there at this early morning hour to watch lefty work the kinks out of his swing with Butch Harmon.

After hitting balls for about 20 minutes, Woods walked towards the first tee with cameras flashing all around him and reporters running like maniacs to get in good position to see Woods official return to the PGA Tour.

Woods went about his normal pre-swing routine before stepping up to the ball and stripping a three-wood right down the center of the fairway.  All that was missing was Dan Hicks’ call of “Expect anything different?”.

After a few holes, it was clear as day that Woods’ knee will in no way hinder his return to competitive golf this week.

If you can believe it, Woods actually appeared to be in better physical condition than we have ever seen him in.

On the fifth hole, Woods smoked a 353-yard drive smack down the middle of the fairway after displaying a swing as powerful and compact as we have ever seen from him.

Following several mammoth drives, Woods could actually be seen with a subtle smile on his face, as if to say “Wow, it feels fantastic being able to hit a ball like that without any pain”.

For the most part, Woods was extremely accurate off the tee. 

However, when his few wayward drives did find the rough, Woods would pick up his ball and move it back into the fairway.

This could simply be due to Woods’ desire to continue working on his swing from ideal fairway conditions or it could have been due to his not wanting to put any unnecessary strain on his knee out of the thick rough still dampened by the morning dew.

Either way, Woods’ game looked exactly as one would expect to see from the world’s No. 1 player.   

As we all know, Woods was able to win the US Open, which is arguably the toughest test in all of golf, on one leg. 

What we saw today was a completely healthy Tiger Woods with a golf game as sharp, if not sharper than ever. 

Unless Tiger Woods has gotten a lot better at hiding pain or suffers some kind of freak relapse to his knee, he has given us no reason whatsoever to believe that he won’t pick up right where he left off at Torrey Pines last June.