Tiger Woods: ‘No Light at the End of the Tunnel’

On Tuesday, Tiger Woods finally spoke out about his future at a news conference from the Bahamas. It sounds as dark and depressing as a nine-iron through the back window of your car after your wife catches you cheating with a series of porn stars.

“There is no timetable,” Woods said regarding his return to the links after his third back surgery. “Literally taking it day-by-day and week-by-week.” Tiger added that he hasn’t started rehabbing his body yet; he’s still focused on walking. “There is no light at the end of the tunnel,” he explained. “I have no idea when I will be back. I listen to my doctors. That is all I know.”

He says he has been upping his play when it comes to video games: “That’s how I pass a lot of my time.” And sounding more like a geriatric than a world-class athlete, he added, “I miss playing soccer with my kids. I can toss the ball but I cannot bend over. I am not athletic. I can’t do anything athletic.” He said he missed his father, that when people celebrate “on Cinco de Mayo, that’s the day I buried my dad,” and opined that he’d be satisfied with his career if he had to call it quits.

Woods has now dropped out of the top 400 in the world for the first time in his professional career. He’s still hosting the Hero World Challenge this year, but he won’t be playing, obviously.

All of this is a major downgrade from his comments in September that he would be back by “early 2016” and that he had “been told I can make a full recovery, and I have no doubt that I will.”

Woods blamed his prolonged recovery time on the fact that he underwent a nerve surgery. “For nerves, there are really no timetables, and therein lies the tricky part because you can come back earlier or you can come back later, it just depends on how the nerve heals and how it settles.”

Woods concluded, “I’m hoping that I can get back out here and compete against these guys. I really do miss it.”