Tiger Woods now has to play alone. In last place.

For two hours on Thursday, we went back to a time when Tiger ruled the golf world. The 14-time major winner was putting on a stripe show, rolling in three straight birdies to move into a tie for first place. It was all working and against all expectations after a long layoff, Tiger looked back.

Then reality set in and he gave back five shots over his last 10 holes to drop into second-to-last place in this small 18-man field.

On Friday morning, his bottom-of-the-leaderboard status went from bad to worse when Justin Rose announced he was withdrawing from the tournament with a bad back. Rose has been bothered by the back but because he’s a resident at this Albany course, he was trying to play through it and support Tiger’s event.

Rose’s WD now means Tiger is officially in last place and will have to play alone on Friday morning. He tees off at 11:12 a.m. ET and without a playing partner, he should sprint his way around this Bahamas resort course in about three hours. It also probably means he’ll play a majority of his round before the event’s official TV coverage begins at 1 p.m. ET (here’s hoping Golf Channel shows all his shots during their pregame show, which begins at noon.)

We did not expect much from Tiger in his return from the longest layoff of his career. Just try to stay healthy, complete four rounds, and not embarrass yourself with the chip yips and some astronomical scores. Last place in a small 18-man field loaded with the best players in the world, who have not been on the shelf for 466 days, was always a likely outcome.

But the prospect of playing by himself in last place for the next three days is downright depressing. Especially given where we were less than 24 hours ago. Tiger looked great and was in first place shortly after tweeting that he couldn’t wait to “mix it up with boys.”

Now he’s playing all alone, in last place, and possibly for three straight days.