Tiger’s Masters press conference: Thursday
Q. Tiger, would you just kind of take us through, sum up how you felt after all this time away and getting back out there?
TIGER WOODS: I felt good. I felt like I hit the ball well enough to shoot 3‑under par. Our entire group was really struggling at the greens. We were talking about how slow they were today. We had a hard time hitting the putts hard enough. You’ve got to give respect to the downhill putts, but they weren’t rolling out.
Q. What about your short game? It looked like so much better than it was. How does it feel? How do you feel when you get over a tough one?
TIGER WOODS: It’s my strength again. That’s why I’ve busted my butt. That’s why I took time off. That’s why I hit thousands and thousands of shots to make sure that it’s back to being my strength. And it did. I tried to hole most of them, that’s the thing. I’m back to hitting shots, making it hop, check on the second bounce, third bounce, I can figure those things out again.
Q. Now that your short game is back to where you want it, what do you need to improve on in the next three days?
TIGER WOODS: Hit the putts harder. We were just‑‑ as I said, our entire group was fooled with the pace of the greens. The balls just weren’t rolling out, and as a group we really struggled on getting the pace right and hitting the putts hard enough.
Q. Tiger, you said the other day that you still expect to win. At this point in the game, are those modified expectations or is that always in your mentality?
TIGER WOODS: You know, I’m still in it. I’m only nine back. And we have a long way to go. And we don’t know what the Masters is going to do, what they’re going to do with the greens or the golf course. You know how they like to change things every now and then.
We’ll see what it’s like tomorrow morning. From what I saw early on this morning, before I went out, a lot of guys were getting it early. And we figured somebody would probably get to 6, and Jordan got to 8, so that’s about right.
The wind picked up but the greens still had enough moisture on them that the balls were holding. They weren’t getting away from us.
Q. What happened on No. 9?
TIGER WOODS: On No. 9 I played the wrong shot. I was trying to turn it down there and I really shouldn’t have turned it down there. The hole is playing short. It’s hot. The ball is flying. It’s not that hard to hit the ball 300, 320 out here in this hot. And I hit the wrong shot. And then on top of that the next one I hit the wrong shot again. I tried to put the ball in the bunker when I probably should have put the ball short right of the bunker and pitched up.