Here are five better ideas than Tiger Woods filling his golf holes with sand to practice

Tiger Woods is back, but it took a ton of work to get him from where he was after back surgery to where he is now. Woods had his Quicken Loans National press conference on Tuesday, and talked about the process of getting back to the game of golf.

It took him a while to get to the full swing, but short game stuff was almost immediate following his surgery. The only problem was, Woods couldn’t get his golf balls out of the hole because he couldn’t bend down.

He and his team had a solution for this problem, but it just doesn’t come off as the most practical.

“The whole progression was putting first. Anybody who has had this procedure done, you can putt the next day. You can hop right out of the recovery room and literally you’re okay to putt. But I didn’t — I wasn’t allowed to bend over and pick the balls out of the holes. So what we did is I kind of had a little creative idea is that we had normal-size holes in my back yards, and I sand-filled them. So I knew if the putt went in or not, but I never had to bend over and get balls out of the hole. We did that for a couple of months,” Woods said.

Now, I’m not a golf course superintendent, but I have worked at enough courses and on enough greens to know the pain of doing something like this. You have to cut the hole, fill it all the way with sand and then I’m assuming dig that out when you want to re-cut the holes. That seems like a ton of work.

Here are some ideas that would have been a ton easier for Tiger:

1.) Golf Club Suction Cup — How did he not think of this? My uncle, who has been dealing with back issues of his own as he limps into his mid-60s, put a suction cup on the end of his putter last year and has never looked back! Tiger, they’re only like $ 4.99 at your local golf shop, and I bet if you walk in, the guy might just give it to you.

2.) Have someone just get them out for you — This is a rich person’s solution, and Tiger is rich.

3.) Leave the mini flags in so you just pull those out — Sure, pros HATE putting with the pin in on putting greens, but if it makes it easier on you, why not?!

4.) Practice round holes — I know he’s seen these from guys pre-tournament, and they really are practical and easy to practice with.