London, June 11 : World No1 golfer Tiger Woods has revealed that life with daughter Sam Alexis, who will be a year old next week, helped him to recover from the injury threatening his career.

Woods, who will return to action at the US Open tomorrow after a third bout of surgery on his left knee, claims his gruelling fitness regime stopped the injury.

"When she wakes up at 2a.m., I get on the leg-press machine and put her on my lap. Six hundred repetitions later, she's out," he said.

Being a father has health risks, too. Sam whacked him with a club!

The world No 1 added with a grin: "Yes, she clunked me on the head once. She has this cut-down little putter she likes to drag around and that's neat."

"She also likes throwing balls at Taz, my border collie, and having him try to catch them or go fetch. It's kind of funny to see an 11 month old and my border collie playing together that way. But it's one of the coolest things to watch," he added.

Woods' blissful family life helped him keep up his spirits when he felt further surgery was unavoidable, The Sun reported.

He went under the knife again in early April, just a few days after finishing runner-up at the Masters for the second year in a row.

Woods has only just started playing golf again and was still limping when he held a press conference two weeks ago to promote his own US Tour event in Washington.

He had still not played a full 18 holes before last week and used a buggy when he did venture on to the course.

Woods, 32, shrugs off his interrupted build-up, reminding everyone what happened when he also chose this week's venue of Torrey Pines for his comeback after his last operation six years ago.

ANI