Tiger Woods made his big return on Tuesday, not to the golf course quite yet, but to the press conference room at his Hero World Challenge event in the Bahamas.
His official return to pro golf will go down Thursday morning when he tees off at Albany alongside Justin Thomas. But prior to the start of the tournament media members got to pose questions to the 15-time major champ for the first time in months.
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With all that has gone down in the golf world in that time, there were a lot of topics to get through. But eventually the conversation turned to the Ryder Cup and, specifically, the viral dispute between Rory McIlroy and caddie Joe LaCava.
Though LaCava was working for Patrick Cantlay when his on-course spat with McIlroy and the European team occurred at Marco Simone, he previously carried Woods’ bag for years, including during his 2019 Masters victory.
While we’ve heard a lot from McIlroy and the Europeans about the incident, and we know that Rory and LaCava settled their differences recently, until Tuesday we hadn’t heard Tiger’s perspective.
When asked about the brouhaha involving his former caddie, Woods boiled it down to “just noise” and “emotions” getting the better of players.
“Well, what transpired there, it was media, it was just noise. Then the — obviously the fact that everyone now carries a mobile device and that was able to spread,” Woods explained in his press conference. “You’re not on home soil, so any time someone — they’re going to try to get in your head and that’s what they tried to do.”
He continued: “I totally get it. Emotions. We all want to win. You have a home side and opposing side, you’re going to get heat and that’s what happened.”
But that wasn’t the only Ryder Cup topic broached on Tuesday. With the 2025 Ryder Cup on tap for New York’s Bethpage Black, and with Phil Mickelson likely out of the running, many believe Woods could be tapped as U.S. team captain.
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But when asked, Woods said he’s too busy helping shape the PGA Tour’s future to worry about a potential captaincy.
“Right now there’s too much at stake with our Tour to think about a Ryder Cup right now,” Woods said. “We have to get this done and we have to be focused on this right now. The Ryder Cup can take a — the players and everyone involved understands that this is an issue we need to focus on.”
Woods tees off for the first round of the Hero World Challenge on Thursday at 11:52 a.m. ET.
