Tiger Woods says he will compete on the PGA Tour again, but his full-time playing days are over
- Tiger Woods was left with multiple leg fractures and a shattered right ankle after a car crash in February.
- He is still working to build muscle in the leg he injured.
Tiger Woods said he will never play full-time professional golf again after experiencing severe injuries in a car crash earlier this year.
Speaking for the first time since his car crash in February, Woods said that his rehab was difficult, but moving forward. While he'll never be a PGA Tour full-timer again, he was optimistic he would compete at some point in the future.
"I think something that is realistic is playing the [PGA] Tour one day—never full-time, ever again—but pick and choose, just like Mr. [Ben] Hogan did. Pick and choose a few events a year and you play around that," Woods told Golf Digest's Henni Koyack in a Zoom interview.
"You practice around that, and you gear yourself up for that," he added. "I think that's how I'm going to have to play it from now on. It's an unfortunate reality, but it's my reality. And I understand it, and I accept it."
A crash in Los Angeles last February left Woods with multiple leg fractures and a shattered right ankle, and he has spent months rehabbing his body back to health.
"I'm not even at the halfway point," he told Koyack. "I have so much more muscle development and nerve development that I have to do in my leg. At the same time, as you know, I've had five back operations. So I'm having to deal with that. So as the leg gets stronger, sometimes the back may act up ... It's a tough road."
While Woods still has plenty of work to do before he is ready to take on PGA Tour competition, he's teased his return a bit on social media, posting a brief video of a swing in late November.
"Making progress," the caption read.
The prospect of Woods once again competing against the best players in golf still feels a long way off. Still, if any player is capable of pulling off yet another improbable comeback story, it's Tiger Woods.