Tiger Woods looks to build on solid effort in Hero World Challenge

While the 2017 portion of the PGA Tour schedule gets underway this week at the SBS Tournament of Champions at Kapalua, the next highly anticipated date is likely to be in February when Tiger Woods takes the next step in returning to the tour full-time. Woods has fully committed to play in the 2017 Genesis Open from Feb. 13 to Feb. 19 at The Riviera Country Club in Pacific Palisades, CA.

He’ll be doing double duty due to the fact that he will be the event’s host since the tourney benefits the Tiger Woods Foundation. The 14-time Major winner and champion of 79 PGA Tour events made it known he plans to play the Genesis Open after finishing 15th in the no-cut starting field of 18 early last month at the Hero World Challenge in the Bahamas.

Several bright spots for Woods

His appearance at the Hero World Challenge was his first after being away for 15 months from the grind of competitive golf. There were several bright spots for Woods during the Bahamian tournament, including his leading the field in making 24 birdies over the event’s four days.

He did, however, also record eight bogeys and six double bogeys. His scorecard total was a four-under 284 on rounds of 73, 65, 70, 76. Woods' second round 65 showed flashes of his former brilliance since there were no bogey blemishes, but his sketchy final day’s 76 displayed the need to get in more playing time to fully recover from several injury issues.

Future events

When Woods shows up at Riviera next month, he’ll be returning to the site of his first PGA Tour event where he debuted as a 16-year-old phenom. Even though the Genesis Open is the only event he’s officially committed to compete in, he has let it be known that he plans to play a full slate of events in 2017. The tournaments he could show up for before Riviera are next week’s Sony Open in Hawaii, the CareerBuilder Challenge from Jan.

16 to Jan. 22, the Farmers Insurance Open from Jan. 23 to Jan. 29, the Waste Management Open from Jan. 30 to Feb. 5, and the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am on Feb. 6 to Feb. 12. Whichever way his schedule plays out in tandem with his practice time, it will all be put together with the goal of being tack sharp in time for a run at his fifth Masters title in early April, and first Major victory since he won the 2008 U.S. Open in a playoff over Rocco Mediate at Torrey Pines.