Tiger Woods has insisted that there were plenty of positives to take from his return to competitive golf despite missing the cut at the Quicken Loans National.

The 38-year-old was four shots away from making it past the halfway stage in Maryland, but he has declared himself pleased with how his body has reacted to a first outing on the PGA Tour since March following back surgery.

"I am really encouraged by what happened this week," Woods told reporters. "I missed the cut by four shots, that's a lot, but what I was able to do physically and the speed I had and the distance I was hitting the golf ball again, I hadn't done that in a very long time.

"I needed to get back into competitive feel, to hit shots and shake some stuff off and see how things were. I came back four weeks earlier than we thought I could, but I've had no setbacks. I got my feel for playing tournament golf."

It was just the 11th missed cut of the former world number one's career.