Woods physically prepared for busy schedule

Tiger Woods has won the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational eight times, but hasn’t been back to Firestone in four years.

Tiger Woods prepared his season schedule under the assumption he would be involved in this weekend's WGC-Bridgestone Invitational.

Woods finished tied for sixth at The Open a fortnight ago to climb back into the world's top 50 and earn an invitation to Akron, Ohio.

But Woods - an 18-time winner of WGC events - is not concerned by the additional physical rigours of playing more competitive golf as he continues his encouraging comeback from back surgery.

"Early part of the summer, [I realised] if I played well, this is what I was going to have to endure, coming with a pretty big schedule at the very end," said Woods. "We built a pretty good physical game plan for it.

"My training schedule, how to build myself, my recovery breaks, even had to factor in how much I can practice, just to make sure I'm physically fit enough to get through this section.

"But I also want to play well and win tournaments through this. I feel like my body is good. I need to keep it that way.

"I still need to train really hard and limit how much I do practice, the wear and tear on the body, because I'm going to be putting it through its paces in tournament play, which as we all know, we hit the ball harder in tournaments than we do in practice."