Masters: Tiger Woods hits 71 to sit three shots behind first-round leader Cameron Smith
- Woods, 46, returns to competition after life-threatening injuries from a car crash 14 months ago, fearing his leg might be amputated
- ‘To see where I’ve been, to get from there to here, it was no easy task. People have no idea how hard it’s been,’ Woods says
Tiger Woods described his first competitive round of golf in 508 days as painful and positive after pushing himself to an opening round one-under 71 at the Masters on Thursday and into the battle for a record-equalling sixth Green Jacket.
Fourteen months after a career-threatening car crash there is still a long painful road ahead for the 46-year-old if he is to match Jack Nicklaus’s Masters’ victories.
To do that he will need to negotiate three more punishing rounds on Augusta National’s undulating layout as well as hours of ice baths and physiotherapy.
But that is the price he must pay to play on a mangled right leg that doctors had considered amputating.
“If you would have seen how my leg looked to where it’s at now, the pictures – some of the guys know,” said Woods, after a round that while painful left a smile on his face and put him just four back of leader Im Sung-jae.
“They’ve seen the pictures and they’ve come over to the house and they’ve seen it.
