Tiger Woods’ return to PGA Tour winner, major champion and most recently, top-5 player in the world golf rankings is nothing short of incredible.
However, that resurgence hasn’t come without its fair share of obstacles. Speaking on Sunday at the Memorial Tournament with GOLF TV’s Henni Zuel, Woods revealed what adjustments and swing changes he has had to incorporate in an effort to take pressure off of his 43-year-old surgically-fused back.
“It’s trying to get this (right) hip deeper, and then from there, keep the left hip deep as well, which puts the club more out in front of me,” Woods explained. “A lot of time when I’m feeling tight, I don’t quite get deep enough, loaded, on my right hip. I start standing up, which puts a lot of stress on my back. But if I don’t feel like I can turn, I can’t get back into my hip, so it all depends how I’ve been training, how I feel, how I work pre-round trying to get everything switched on and when I’m able to do it, I can do what I did in April.
“I didn’t do a very good job at Bethpage, but I did a much better job this week.”
Tiger’s thoughts heading to Pebble pic.twitter.com/25wPiGoW8i
— GOLFTV (@GOLFTV) June 2, 2019
If Woods seems unusually chatty and upbeat in the above clip, it’s because he finished the Memorial in scorching-hot fashion. Weekend rounds of 70-67 moved him into the top-10, highlighted by the frenetic start to his final round in which he birdied seven of the first 12 holes at Muirfield Village to get as deep as 11-under par.
As he said to close out the clip, he feels like he’s in great form and ready to use a week of practice to peak at Pebble Beach for the third major championship of the season.
“(This weekend) set myself off into a nice practice week,” Woods said. “The things that I was working on pre-Augusta, and now pre-Open, materialized this week, which is great.
“I hit so many good shots, especially today (Sunday), with this wind swirling all over the place. I was able to flight it and hit it flush. The things I was working on on the range, trying to hit the ball up, up, up, up, that’s what we’re going to have to do at Pebble because the greens are going to be hard, they’re going to be firm, they’re tiny.
“The practice sessions were great. Even though on the golf course I had to hit everything flat because of the wind and the soft greens, the ability to hit the ball up in the air allows me to hit the ball lower easier. That definitely paid off and hopefully, it pays off in a couple of weeks.”
