In what will be music to the ears of golf fans across the world, Tiger Woods “played great” during a practice round at Augusta National ahead of the Masters Tournament according to Will Zalatoris.
Since Woods last played at The Masters last year, he has undergone surgery on his right ankle which he spent the majority of 2023 recovering from, before making a competitive comeback at the Hero World Challenge last December.
He then returned to PGA Tour action two months ago but withdrew from the Genesis Invitational during the second round after suffering with influenza.
That was the last time the public saw Woods before this week’s Masters Tournament, where he and Zalatoris played the back nine together in preparation for the 88th edition of the first Major Championship of the year.
Should the former World No.1 make weekend, he would create history by becoming the first player to make 24 consecutive cuts at The Masters.
He is currently tied Gary Player and Fred Couples on 23.
“It’s just everything the guy has done,” Zalatoris said after the duo’s practice round.
“You could just sit there and analyse the same stats for his entire career and put him in five different buckets and every one of them is never going to be broken.
“He played great today. He outdrove me a couple times, so there was some chirping going on. So, you know, he looks great. He’s moving as well as he can be.
“Again, with everything he's gone through, it's pretty amazing to see how good he's swinging it."
While Zalatoris and Woods are miles apart in terms of Major Championship victories, with the former currently without one while the latter boasts 15 to his name, the duo have grown close over the last year after Zalatoris had a microdiscectomy, a surgical procedure to relieve pain and other symptoms from a herniated disc in the spine pressing on an adjacent nerve root.
Woods had the exact same procedure ten years ago, the first of four, so was there to offer Zalatoris support while he spent time in rehab recovering after withdrawing from last year’s Masters Tournament.
"It's kind of more of just, 'Hey, how you feeling? You feel this? You feel that?'" Zalatoris said of Woods lending support.
"The patience game is really hard. Obviously, he had gone through way more than what I had gone through.
“Having the same surgeons, kind of the same team, you know, just having the conversation I guess about, 'Hey, after this amount of time how do you feel?'
“I think with the success I had had in Majors and how close I've been and how driven I've been to get it and then having a setback, having the exact same injury, like I said, it's funny because it's not so much of the answers or the questions that I've asked and him giving the answers, it's been more the thought-provoking questions that he's given to me has really been the stuff that's kind of got me back to where I am now."
