AUGUSTA: Tiger Woods was three adrift through nine holes on Thursday in his doubtful hunt for a record- equalling sixth Masters title, 14 months after a auto crash left him with injuries so severe he stressed he might lose a leg.
The 46- time-old, who has fallen to 973rd in the world rankings, said this week he allowed his game was good enough to win a 16th major crown.
But he conceded his surgically repaired leg was an unknown volume heading into his first top-flight competitive round in 17 months on the hilly,-yard Augusta National course.
“ You know, 72 holes is a long road, and it’s going to be a tough challenge and a challenge that I ’m up for,” Woods said days before the event.
Woods cut a vibrant figure in a hot pink shirt and black trousers — all the better for the thousands of Augusta patrons keen to get a regard of him to track their idol.
A 30- nanosecond detention to the launch because ofpre-dawn showers only boosted the expectation for Woods’s appearance on the first tee, where he was saluted with giddy applause.
Woods was n’t pleased with his opening drive, which came up suddenly of the righthand fairway cellarage. His approach trickled off the green but he drained a 10- bottom par saving putt.
He opened with five straight pars, his approach at the fifth to 15 bases egging a big smile for box Joe LaCava before Woods’s birdie putt lipped out.
But Woods followed with his first birdie of the day at the par-three sixth, where he landed his tee shot two bases from the leg.
He was in the trees lining the right side of the fairway at the seventh but saved par, but he gave back a shot at the eighth despite chancing the fairway at the par-five.
After a lengthy delay to hit into the green, Woods came up suddenly. His third shot also failed to reach the green and he was unfit to make get a par- saving nine- bottom putt to fall.
Woods was left off the tee on the way to a par at the ninth, where 23- time-old playing mate Joaquin Niemann — who was n’t born when Woods won his first Masters title in 1997 — drilled out for eagle to seize the early lead on three-under par.
Australian Cameron Smith, Charl Schwartzel and English stager Lee Westwood were two-under in the early going.
Niemann is among a raft of youthful golfers whose careers were shaped by Woods’s influence.
Scottie Scheffler, 25, arrived at Augusta ranked number one in the world after winning his first three US PGA Tour titles in the space of two months.
Spain’s US Open champion Jon Rahm, 27, can recapture the number one ranking he ceded to Scheffler with a first Masters palm, one of five players who can displant the American this week along with reigning British Open champion Collin Morikawa, FedEx Cup champion Patrick Cantlay, rising Norwegian star Viktor Hovland and Smith.
Northern Ireland’s four- time major winner, Rory McIlroy, will be trying for the eighth time to complete a career Grand Slam with a Masters palm, while defending champion Hideki Matsuyama of Japan was indeed through eight holes.
But all the focus was on Woods, and whether he can pull off the most miraculous comeback yet in a career marked as important by his gritty determination to defy pain as by his sublime skill.
Woods won the 2008 US Open with a broken leg, also battled through five back surgeries, including a spinal emulsion, before he won his 15th major title at the 2019 Masters.
“ I mean, how numerous comebacks has he had?” former Masters champion Jordan Spieth marvelled.
Should he defy the odds and match Jack Nicklaus’s record of six green jackets Woods would come the third-oldest major winner in history and would surpass Nicklaus as the oldest Masters winner by a matter of weeks.
