Still, Woods conceded that walking Augusta National’s hilly terrain for four consecutive days will test the recuperative limits of his right leg, which was surgically rebuilt after his sport-utility vehicle tumbled off a Los Angeles-area boulevard at a high speed on Feb. 23, 2021.
He sustained open fractures, in several places, of the tibia and the fibula in his right leg, injuries that had to be stabilized with a rod and with screws and pins inserted into his foot and ankle. Woods spent a month in a hospital and was confined to a bed at his Florida home for another two months.
Asked Tuesday if he had pain while playing golf, Woods replied: “There is, each and every day.”
Woods said he had no misgivings about his ability to play. The worry, he said, was the topographical perils of Augusta and the demands of the 72-hole tournament: “Walking is the hard part.”
Woods is scheduled to play the first round with Louis Oosthuizen, who finished second at the Masters in 2012 but has never won at Augusta, and Joaquin Niemann, who tied for 40th at last year’s tournament.
Woods, who practiced briefly Tuesday morning before heavy rain chased the golfers from the course before 11 a.m., said he planned to play a nine-hole practice round on Wednesday. Woods also played nine practice holes on Sunday and Monday, the second time with Fred Couples and Justin Thomas. Woods was limping more noticeably on Monday than on Sunday. He walked up the many hills slowly with his gait slightly more inhibited.
Couples, a longtime friend and a frequent practice-round companion of Woods’s for more than a decade, agreed with Woods that the sloping, uneven contours of Augusta National would most likely present the biggest challenge to Woods.
“It is about the walking,” Couples said. “It’s brutal to walk, and to go do that after what he’s gone through — whatever it was, 14 months ago — and to be playing today?
