At long last, Tiger Woods’ name is officially on a tee sheet for a golf tournament — one that’s public, played against his peers, for millions of dollars, and in front of cameras and spectators. Thursday will be the 467th day since Tiger last appeared in a PGA Tour event, and Woods is set to go off at noon ET alongside Patrick Reed in his own Hero World Challenge.
Tee times, pairings set for Tiger Woods’ return at Hero World Challenge
After 16 months away, the Big Cat is finally back on the tee sheet and set to return to competitive golf.
Photo by Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images
The Hero World Challenge is one of those silly season events, but it’s sanctioned by the PGA Tour and there are Official World Golf Rankings points on the line. It’s a little 18-player game, but the imprimatur of Tiger has always drawn a loaded field. The offseason event is one of several throughout the season that benefits the Tiger Woods Foundation, and it’s a highlight of what is the deadest quarter of the golf year.
That it is now the place for Tiger to make his return from the longest layoff of his career only adds to the hype and makes this otherwise inconsequential early December tourney a must-watch. While the field is loaded, nothing much matters in this 2016 edition except for Tiger ... his every shot, movement, and utterance after 16 months of recovery and conjecture about when, if ever, we’d see him tee it up again.
That inspection begins on Thursday with Reed, his “protege” of sorts at this year’s Ryder Cup. Reed is the guy who thinks he’ll have a Tiger Woods career even though he’s never finished in the top 10 at a major. He even wears red and black on Sundays and probably thinks he’s the best player on Earth. There’s no doubt he’s been a Ryder Cup stud and a cult figure among close golf watchers, but he’s just a bit player this week. Maybe his inflated assessment of his abilities and psychotic competitiveness are what drew assistant captain Tiger to him during that Ryder Cup week.
With just 18 players in the field, there’s obviously a lot of flexibility to move tee times around over four days in the Bahamas. There will be just nine twosomes across 80 minutes at Albany, that 1-percenter enclave near Nassau. Some of these pairings would be sexy as hell in any other setting. Dustin Johnson and Brooks Koepka launching missiles in the same pairing would be a highlight on just about every other day this season. But Thursday is an entirely different show and Tiger is all that matters.
Here’s your full tee sheet for the most anticipated return of the year (all times ET):
11:10 a.m. — Bubba Watson, Rickie Fowler
11:20 a.m. — Jimmy Walker, Brandt Snedeker
11:30 a.m. — J.B. Holmes, Zach Johnson
11:40 a.m. — Justin Rose, Henrik Stenson
11:50 a.m. — Jordan Spieth, Matt Kuchar
12 p.m. — Tiger Woods, Patrick Reed
12:10 p.m. — Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka
12:20 p.m. — Hideki Matsuyama, Louis Oosthuizen
12:30 p.m. — Emiliano Grillo, Russell Knox
The Golf Channel will have coverage of the first round beginning at 1:30 p.m. ET on Thursday. Their pregame show will go live at noon and should feature Tiger’s return and first few holes.
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