Dominic Foos was not even born when Tiger Woods won his first Major Championship.
This week, the two golfing record-breakers will both be teeing it up in the Omega Dubai Desert Classic as they each take early steps on their respective comebacks from injury.
While the Woods saga has been well-documented, Foos – the youngest tournament winner in Challenge Tour history – has spent several months out of the spotlight recovering from a wrist injury suffered in August, forcing him to miss the back end of the 2016 season.
Now fully recovered, the German will compete alongside the world’s best golfers at Emirates Golf Club this week before spending four weeks in South Africa as he bids to get tournament-sharp before the Road to Oman begins with the Barclays Kenya Open in March.
“The preparation for this season has been going really well,” said the 19 year old. “I’m really looking forward to the Omega Dubai Desert Classic, and I’m actually going to play five tournaments in a row, this week in Dubai and then four weeks in South Africa. I think it will be very good preparation for the Challenge Tour, to get back into the playing mode and some competitive golf.
“I’m 100% now so that’s why I’m really, really happy that the wrist is totally fine. I haven’t felt any pain since I started hitting balls again so that’s a really positive thing.
“It’s a great field this week, and I know the course very well. I’ve played the tournament for the last two years, I’m based out here in Dubai now and I really like the course, so it should be a great week.”
Woods is an inevitable talking point as he plays his first regular European Tour event for three years – though it is incredible to realise that Foos’ September 1997 birth date fell five months after the American’s maiden Masters Tournament victory.
“Tiger playing is obviously incredible,” he said. “It’s going to be my first time playing in the same field as him and I think it’s such a good thing for the tournament, for everybody, because it’s a different kind of attention when Tiger’s playing – it doesn’t matter how he plays, but when he’s playing it’s something else.
“I was born in 1997, so I don’t remember his best times around 2000, 2001, but I remember watching tournaments with my family and the final day, Tiger wearing red, so I have really good memories of it and it’s really cool to be playing alongside him this week.”
It is now almost 18 months since a 17 year old Foos announced himself to the wider golfing world by winning the GANT Open following a hugely successful junior and amateur career.
Last season he looked like he was finding that tournament-winning form again when injury struck at the Swedish Challenge hosted by Robert Karlsson, ultimately meaning a ten-week lay-off – the longest the youngster has ever gone without swinging a club.
Now refreshed and recovered, Foos is planning an assault on this year’s Road to Oman, targeting a place in the top 15 of the Rankings and European Tour graduation.
“I really feel like this is my time,” he said. “I actually had that feeling last season, that I was going to make it, because I was just starting to play really well – I was second in Northern Ireland, then Sweden the following week I injured my wrist but at that point I didn’t think it was a major thing,
“I finished the tournament and we went to Germany to see my doctor there, did some physiotherapy stuff, then I played the Rolex Trophy, and I played well, finished sixth, but I played with a lot of pain but somehow battled through.
“Ultimately we went to see the doctor in Munich and he said I needed to take eight weeks off completely, not do anything, and he thought it would heal that way, and this is exactly what we did.
“I gave it an extra two weeks to rest, so I think I took ten weeks in total off, without swinging a club at all. It was the longest break I’ve ever taken from golf – before that I think it was only about two weeks, so that was a very tough time, and a bit nerve-wracking to start playing again.
“To take this time off, to be fresh again when I come back, that can only be a good thing, that was how I tried to think about it, but of course it was tough – September 19 was the last time I played golf and I started hitting balls again December 10, so almost three months. Now I’m feeling good again and ready to go.”
