Tiger Woods: I still don’t know when I will return to golf

Tiger Woods is confident he is making progress, but remains cautious over setting any date for a potential competitive return to the golf course.

The former world number one has not played since finishing joint 10th in the Wyndham Championship last year, after which he underwent two back operations in the space of six weeks.

Last month Woods, a 14-time major winner, played five holes with former Open and Masters champion Mark O’Meara at the official opening of the course he designed at Bluejack National Golf Club, and has taken part in casual games at Medalist, a club near his Florida home.

However, the 40-year-old American found it tough going on Monday when hitting three successive balls into the water as he took part in a ceremonial hole-in-one competition on the 102-yard 10th tee at the media day for the upcoming Quicken Loans National, which his foundation hosts at the Congressional Country Club in Bethesda, Maryland.

Woods, now down to 524 in the rankings, faced the familiar question about his fitness update at the event.

“That’s the overriding question I keep hearing, when are you coming back, when are you playing? I hear it all the time, and if I knew, I would tell you, because it’d be fun to know, it would be nice to know that I am actually going to be playing on such and such a date, but I don’t know,” he said, in a press conference broadcast by www.pgatour.com.

Woods has registered for the US Open at Oakmont in June, although that was something he had to do ahead of the deadline to keep his options open.

“I have been practising at home, and I am progressing nicely, I am hoping to play (again soon),” Woods added.

“I am still trying to get stronger, trying to get more pliable.

“I am hitting the ball better and everything about my game is coming around.

“Now it’s just a matter of being more consistent with it, and then being able to do that not only at home against the boys at Medalist and trying to take their cash — trying to come out here and doing it against the best players in the world is a completely different deal.”