Tiger Woods has returned to the forefront of golf, but it took a toll on his health to get there.

Speaking before his small-field Hero World Challenge in the Bahamas, Woods covered a range of topics, from his first win in five years to his strange little Thanksgiving pay-per-view with Phil Mickelson. And the theme was simple: Woods exceeded his own expectations, and wore himself out doing it.

“I was not physically prepared to play that much golf at the end of the year,” Woods said, noting that he played seven of nine weeks to finish out the PGA Tour season as well as the Ryder Cup.

Plus, the weather played a factor.

“It’s one of those years; it’s never been this hot,” he said. “At every single tournament, it was just stifling. Starting out in D.C. [the Quicken Loans National], then you go to Akron, even the PGA [Championship] was hot for all the days. New York, Boston. It was in the mid-90s at [the Tour Championship at] East Lake. It was just hot. It was hard for me to maintain my strength and my weight through all of that. I was exhausted by the time I got to the Ryder Cup. I was worn out mentally, physically, emotionally.”

Almost surely as a result of his 18-event workload, the most he’d played in a season since 2012, Woods faltered and went 0-4 in Paris as part of the U.S.’s Ryder Cup debacle. So he shut it down for several weeks heading into The Match.

“I took a significant break after the Ryder Cup, got away from it for a bit,” Woods said. “My training sessions have been good. I’ve been getting a little bit stronger. My core and my legs are definitely stronger than they have been, which is a positive. Now I get started working on my game and getting that organized heading into next year. Haven’t really spent a lot of time doing that. I’ve been working more on getting my body ready to handle the rigors of long practice sessions again and getting back to that.”

Where Woods will play in 2019

What events will Woods play once the calendar turns? At the moment, all that’s certain is the Genesis Open, which benefits Woods’ foundation, and the four majors — which, lest you forget, run from April to July this year with the PGA Championship’s move to May. Also in the possible mix: The Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines, the Arnold Palmer Invitational, the Players Championship, and the season-ending FedEx Cup Playoffs. But, as always, the majors remain the prize, and Woods will gear his season around those four events.

“What I did in the last two major championships, I gave myself a chance to win both of them and I was right there,” said Woods, who tied for sixth at The Open and was second at the PGA. “That’s ultimately what we want to have happen. Now it’s about trying to get everything to peak together like I did for those two weeks, to do it again four more times. That’s the trick.

Woods on “The Match”

This time last week, Woods was preparing to play Phil Mickelson in a one-on-one match for $9 million in Las Vegas. It was a good idea poorly executed, with flaws on both the technical and logistical sides. “I think overall the experience was positive,” he said. “Obviously there’s some things we can do as far as interaction and as far as play. I wish we both would have played better, but neither one of us putted well that day and there were some tough hole locations out there. So maybe going forward, just don’t quite have the greens so fast or the pins so difficult. But also, as short as the golf course was playing, we should have made at least seven, eight birdies apiece. We just did not.”

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Jay Busbee is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Contact him at jay.busbee@yahoo.com or find him on Twitter or on Facebook.

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