Tiger Woods Set To Compete At Deutsche Bank Championship As Girlfriend Lindsey Vonn Heads To Chile To Continue Her Rehab

Both Tiger Woods and Lindsey Vonn will be very busy weekends, recovering from injuries but getting back to business, as well.

Tiger Woods has declared himself healthy enough to participate in the Deutsche Bank Championship tournament while his girlfriend will head to Portillo, Chile to hit the slopes for the first time since she blew out her right knee at the world championships in February.

Woods, who went 18 holes with New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and three other amateurs felt good after taking a few swings. Woods collapsed to his knees in pain, over the weekend at The Barclays, due to a back spasm. Woods finished the event in second place despite the pain.

"It was nice to go out there and be able to play all 18 holes and have no issues whatsoever," said Woods. "Hopefully my back will stay where it's at right now and, if not, improve so I can start doing the other little exercises, start strengthening it and getting back to where it needs to be."

Woods understands that he is at a point in his career where injuries don't heal as quickly as they used to compared to his younger days on the tour and prepares accordingly.

"That's part of playing sports," said Woods. "And I've had plenty of surgeries over the course of my career, starting in '94, when I was in college. So it's the nature of what we do as an athlete. I try to do a lot of preventative things, but the nature of it is that we are subjecting our bodies to things that probably it wasn't meant to do."

Meanwhile, Vonn - who blew out her right knee, needing reconstructive surgery, racing the Super-G on the opening day of the world alpine championships in Schladming, Austria - is hungry to go fast again.

Vonn will start off with free skiing while rehabbing in Portillo and is hoping to run some gates during her two-week stay. She hopes to be ready to compete in World Cup races at Beaver Creek, Colo., in late November.

Vonn, a four-time World Cup overall champion, plans to compete in the downhill, super-G, giant slalom and super combined events.

"I would love to win as many World Cups as possible but my main focus is definitely on the Olympics," Vonn told USAToday.com. "If I start off slow, it's fine. I want to make sure that by the time I get to Sochi that I'm 100% in those events."