{"id":10685,"date":"2016-02-25T09:00:55","date_gmt":"2016-02-25T17:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/tiger-woods-posts-video-to-rebut-rumors-of-his-demise\/"},"modified":"2016-02-25T09:00:55","modified_gmt":"2016-02-25T17:00:55","slug":"tiger-woods-posts-video-to-rebut-rumors-of-his-demise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/sports\/tiger-woods-posts-video-to-rebut-rumors-of-his-demise\/","title":{"rendered":"Tiger Woods posts video to rebut rumors of his demise"},"content":{"rendered":"

PALM BEACH GARDENS, Fla. \u2014<\/strong> Tiger Woods posted a video of him swinging a 9-iron in a golf simulator on Wednesday to shoot down rumors on social media that suggested his recovery from back surgeries had worsened to the point he could not even sit in a chair.<\/p>\n

The 13-second video Woods posted on Twitter shows him dressed in shorts and golf shoes, and he takes a smooth swing on a golf simulator.<\/p>\n

\u201cProgressing nicely,\u201d Woods wrote.<\/p>\n

The video had a time stamp of Wednesday.<\/p>\n

If nothing else, it provided the first update on Woods since he spoke at the Hero World Challenge the first week of December. This was intended primarily, however, because of the social media storm that began over the weekend with a Twitter account called \u201cSecret Tour Pro.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mark Steinberg, Woods\u2019 agent at Excel Sports Management, released a statement Monday that said the rumors were \u201cridiculous and absolutely false.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWith everything that went on this weekend with Twitter exploding and the ridiculous and erroneous discussions \u2014 I don\u2019t even want to call it reporting \u2014 we were inundated with fans saying: \u2018Wow. How can this be true?\u2019 Clearly, it wasn\u2019t true,\u201d Steinberg said Wednesday.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I picked up the phone and called you and said he\u2019s doing some chipping and putting and making some swings up to a 9-iron \u2014 and that\u2019s what the club was \u2014 is that impactful or a visual evidence of that?\u201d he said. \u201cWe felt that was a more appropriate way to go.\u201d<\/p>\n

Woods first had a microdiscectomy a week before the 2014 Masters, which kept him out nearly three months. He took off another three months to get stronger, but then announced another back surgery in September, and a third one at the end of October.<\/p>\n

He has not played since August. He has not won since August 2013.<\/p>\n

The tweet Sunday from \u201cSecret Tour Pro\u201d \u2014 who claims to be a tour player, though it has never been verified \u2014 said that Woods\u2019 condition had worsened since Christmas and that he has to ride in a car with the seat fully reclined. <\/p>\n

The tweet also said Woods has to lay down for the majority of the time and sitting in chair is no longer possible.<\/p>\n

Robert Lusetich, who wrote a book about Woods\u2019 2009 season after returning from knee surgery, tweeted similar information the next day that he attributed to his sources, and talked about it on a national radio show.<\/p>\n

Steinberg could not say if Woods would have posted the video without the rumors.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe does want to keep people in the loop to some degree,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Missing from the update was anything beyond \u201cprogressing nicely.\u201d Woods said in December that he misses competing and wants to return, though he does not appear to be in any rush this time. He has said he tried to come back too early from the first back surgery.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s going to learn from the past,\u201d Steinberg said. \u201cWe don\u2019t want to put a timetable on it. He\u2019ll come back when he\u2019s ready.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

PALM BEACH GARDENS, Fla. \u2014 Tiger Woods posted a video of him swinging a 9-iron in a golf simulator on Wednesday to shoot down rumors on social media that suggested his recovery from back surgeries had worsened to the point he could not even sit in a chair. The 13-second video Woods posted on Twitter […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":10686,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":6,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-10685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10685","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10685"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10685\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10686"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10685"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=10685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}