By Steve Keating
AUGUSTA, Georgia (Reuters) – Tiger Woods has always maintained he would never enter a tournament he does not believe he can win but he offered no such bravado on Tuesday about his chances of adding a sixth Masters Green Jacket to his collection.
Even last year returning to competitive golf at Augusta National 14 months after a car crash nearly resulted in the amputation of his right leg, a defiant Woods insisted he was there to win.
But given the opportunity during his pre-Masters news conference, a reflective 15-time major winner was content to talk of “small victories”.
Saying his game and endurance are both better than a year ago when he astonished the sporting world by making the Masters cut and grinding through four rounds, the 47-year-old was offering no bold predictions of what to expect this week.
“I didn’t win the tournament, but for me to be able to come back and play was a small victory in itself,” Woods told reporters. “I still would have liked to have gotten the W, but I didn’t.
“I think I got my own smaller version of that, to come back and just be able to play.
“It’s harder now.
“I don’t play as many tournaments, and I don’t practice as much. I’m limited in what I can do.”
Having played just a single competitive event this season at the Genesis Open where he finished in a tie for 45th, there are even more questions than usual about the state of Woods’s game.
While he looked more comfortable in his only start this year, Woods’s surgically reconstructed leg will be put to the test at Augusta National, a layout he knows better than anyone in the field but also one of the more taxing walks on the PGA Tour.
“I just have to be cognizant of how much I can push it,” said Woods. “It’s been a tough, tough road.
“I don’t know how many more (Masters) I have in me.”
When it comes to Augusta, knowledge is the currency that can put a down payment on a Green Jacket and no one has banked more of it than Woods, who has not always been keen to share.
For years Woods was the one asking the questions now, playing in his 25th Masters, he is providing the answers to a new generation, like 20-year-old South Korean Tom Kim, who he played a practice round with on Monday.
“I’m probably sharing more and more knowledge now because of the fact that I was always asking guys how to play this golf course,” said Woods, who is paired with Xander Schauffele and Norway’s Viktor Hovland for Thursday’s opening round.
“So it was that transition where I was asking all the guys how to play this golf course, and then now they are asking me how to play.
“I just think it’s understanding, picking some guys’ brains and figuring out what they need to do to win this tournament.”
(Reporting by Steve Keating in Augusta. Editing by Toby Davis)
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