Tiger Woods made his return to competitive golf last night, when he suited up for the Jupiter Links Golf Club in their TGL Finals match against the Los Angeles Golf Club. His return was underwhelming to say the least. His Jupiter Links team lost 9-2 in his return and only made it through 10 holes of a potentially 15-hole match. While not completely their fault, as the Los Angeles team made 3 straight eagles to close the match out.
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But now more on Woods and his return. He had said that he was going to be rusty going into this match, and he kinda looked it. Mainly, his putter looked rusty. My main takeaway from the big cat’s return last night was just how stiff he looked. I know what you’re thinking, but he’s had so many back surgeries, and he’s 50 years old, he’s not going to look as fluid as he used to. My concern is less about the golf swing and more about how he was walking. It flat-out looked uncomfortable. So when I think about him trying to walk around Augusta National in 2 weeks, it just seems like a far stretch to think he can compete.
As far as his actual play goes, he was able to create the ball speed necessary to compete. He got up to 177 mph with his driver last night. For comparison, that’s a similar ball speed to Scottie Scheffler and Matt Fitzpatrick. So when it comes to swinging clubs, it would appear that he is there physically. I just find it hard to believe he will play if he’s not fully there physically, with him having not played competitively since the 2024 Open Championship.
When asked about potentially playing in The Masters, Woods said this, “As I said, I’ve been trying. Just this body…doesn’t recover like it did when it was 24, 25. It doesn’t mean I’m not trying. I’ve been trying for a while.” Woods would continue on to say that he will be practicing and playing at home this week to try to make progress. He will be in Augusta regardless, with the opening of The Loop course at The Patch the week after The Masters, and of course, the Champions Dinner on Tuesday before The Masters.
One thing Tiger’s faithful fans will hold on to is that he had said previously he wasn’t going to play in the TGL Finals, and we saw how that turned out. But the challenge of walking Augusta National is something totally different.
Scottie has WD from the Texas Children’s Houston Open
This event has been Scottie’s Master’s tune-up event for the last 2 years. In both 2024 and 2025, Scheffler finished T2 at the event. Luckily, it is one of the seemingly few times we get a withdrawal for good news, as Scottie and his wife, Meredith, are expecting their 2nd child. With that, I would be surprised if we see Scheffler get some Masters prep in next week at the Valero Texas Open. With Scheffler’s withdrawal, Matt Kuchar is now in the field.
The other field changes for the Texas Children’s Open are:
Austin Smotherman (WD), Danny Willett (IN)
Cam Davis (WD), Jimmy Stanger (IN)
Ryo Hisatsune (WD), Paul Waring (IN)
Michael Kim (WD), Jesper Svensson (IN)
Matt McCarty (WD), Doug Ghim (IN)
Bud Cauley (WD), Seamus Power (IN)
Also, with the inclusion of Brooks Koepka, the field will expand from 133 to 135 to round out threesomes. The players who got in the field for that were Andrew Putnam and Kris Ventura.
