Tiger Woods ‘fired up’ to make second comeback start at Riviera

‘Fired up’ Tiger reflects on playing Riviera as a teenager and his ‘eye-opening’ realization that he ‘was really not that good’ at golf.

Tiger Woods holds a special place in his heart for Riviera Country Club, where he will make the second stop on his 2018 comeback tour.

Woods has never won an event at the historic Los Angeles venue, where he came to grips with the reality, as a teenage amateur, that his game was not nearly so strong as he believed it to be. Despite that, Woods wrote on Thursday that he was psyched to revisit the 92-year-old course that has hosted three major championships.

“I am fired up to return to Riviera,” Woods said on his website two weeks ahead of the second start of his latest comeback to PGA Tour competition. “I first attended the tournament when I was 9 or 10, my dad took me there. We went a few more times and then I tried to qualify a couple times.”

A year after failing to make it into the tournament, Woods played his first tour event, as a 16-year-old high school sophomore on a sponsor’s exemption, on the iconic track. After shooting 72-75, Woods missed the cut but “felt pretty good” about his effort — until he discovered where he stood in the tournament.

“I looked at the scoreboard and I’m 17 strokes behind Davis Love III,” Woods wrote. “It was eye-opening knowing that I was really not that good. I thought I could play the game, but obviously I wasn’t worth a lick compared to these guys and had a long way to go.”

Woods said he used that recognition to motivate him.

“It made me more determined than ever to work on my game and improve,” wrote Woods, who will serve as host of the Genesis Open, which benefits his foundation.

As for his review of how he did last week in his first official tour start in 12 months and just his second since his T10 at the Wyndham Championship, Tiger was rather happy with the outcome.

“What a difference a year makes,” he said. “I had fusion surgery last April and recently competed in the Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines, my first full-field event in a year and only my second since August of 2015. I finished T-23, and all in all, it was a very positive start.

“It felt so good to be back with the guys and compete again.” Woods added. “Words can’t describe how much I missed it. Most importantly, I was pain-free.”

In his first start at Riviera since illness forced him to withdraw from the Nissan Open in 2006 after scoring 69-74, Woods will face a star-studded field that includes defending champion and world No. 1 Dustin Johnson, Jordan Spieth, Justin Thomas, Hideki Matsuyama, and Rory McIlroy.

Johnson teed it up with Woods around Thanksgiving for the first time since they played together at last year’s Farmers and was impressed with what he saw.

“He’s swinging completely different. He looked healthy. He was swinging with some speed compared to what I saw at Farmers where you could tell he just wasn’t feeling that great, he wasn’t swinging very good and he wasn’t swinging with any kind of speed,” DJ said earlier this week at the Genesis media day. “So it was good to see him playing and hitting the ball well again, actually hitting it with some force and getting the ball out there. He looked like he did when he was playing really well.”

Johnson looked forward to some Tiger-ignited fireworks at Riviera.

“I hope [Tiger] plays well,” he said, “and I hope to see him coming down the stretch on Sunday.”