WATCH: Tiger Woods doesn’t look like a man about to retire in this range session

The past 10 days have brought a whole range of emotions when it comes to Tiger Woods. A year with barely his name in the headlines is now marked at the end by a pile of information generating all sorts of thoughts, feelings, and opinions.

On November 21, Woods posted a video of him hitting a short iron on a distance, the first time the public had seen him on video since his horrific car crash. him at the end of February.

On Monday, an interview with Golf Digest decline, and Woods seems almost contemplative about the present and almost in denial about the future. He says he doesn’t need to scale Everest again and thinks about the birds chirping and the feeling of lounging on the lawn in his backyard.

“I can still play golf,” Woods told Golf Digest. “I can still, if my legs are fine, I can still enter a tournament here or there. But when it comes to climbing again and getting to the top, I don’t think that’s my realistic expectation. .. ”

On Tuesday, November 30, Woods spoke to the press for the first time in 2021. He won’t answer questions about his car wreck (“all of those answers already answered). in the enquiry”), but he answered doubly about his desires (or lack of them).

“I got my final major and I marked two more events along the way,” says Woods. “I don’t know in advance this leg will go back to how it was, so I’ll never get it back and the clock is ticking. I’m getting older, I’m not young anymore. All of that ends. Matching means a full schedule and a full workout and recovery schedule needed to do that, no, I don’t have any desire to do that.”

Then on Wednesday, the PGA Tour posted a longer video of Woods hitting three woods on the course at Albany Golf Course, where he’s hosting the Hero World Challenge this week, and all of what he said in the previous two days had completely evaporated.

Tiger spoke on Tuesday like a man maybe was likely to play the PGA Tour again in the future but never had the success he once had, even by more recent standards. And while hitting a couple of logs with no one around is a far cry from the PGA Tour training and major championship weeks, Tiger’s swing looks really good and he doesn’t move as well. a man has a 50% chance of losing his leg just 10 months ago.

While this video will (and probably even should!) create a lot of optimism about Tiger’s future, it still fits the story he’s claiming. Tiger never said he couldn’t hit a golf ball, but he did imply that the grueling nature of preparing his body, mind, and heart for a return to the arena at 46 not as attractive as it was even a few years ago. He also said he wasn’t even sure his body would allow him to do the prep work needed to elevate his game to the level he needed to compete in events.

Still, this should be encouraging, and perhaps Tiger will play with us all one last time. His golfing wit and mental discipline are both off the charts and could allow him to compete at future events even without his best. Nobody knew about it, maybe not even Tiger. What we do know – what the past 10 days have taught us – is that even after a year of absence and a bleak future, Tiger still maintains a form and a scheme that few athletes in the world have ever seen. history has ever grasped. He may be tired of us clinging to every word and every shot, but even in the 25 years since, we’ve learned that our desire for him to do just that. again is still completely infinite.