Tiger Woods is injured again, backs out of next 2 tournaments

Tiger Woods provided the latest update in the never-ending and increasingly tiresome suspense about his immediate on-course future when he announced before Friday’s deadline that he was not going to stay in the field of next week’s Genesis Open at Riviera. Woods said Friday that he was pulling out of the event in Los Angeles and will also pass on his scheduled start after that, the following week’s Honda Classic.

Unless he adds the Valspar Championship, which is unlikely, this timetable takes him up to the Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill, a course where he’s won eight times and usually plays as a part of his pre-Masters prep routine. So he’s effectively taking a month off by choosing not to play these next two tournaments.

Tiger cited the “back spasms” that flared up in Dubai last week as a reason for the change in schedule.

”My doctors have advised me not to play the next two weeks, to continue my treatment and to let my back calm down,” he said on his website. “This is not what I was hoping for or expecting. I am extremely disappointed to miss the Genesis Open, a tournament that benefits my foundation, and The Honda Classic, my hometown event. I would like to thank Genesis for their support, and I know we will have an outstanding week.”

News that the former world No. 1 won’t play the event that benefits his foundation was hardly a shocker. Woods made it through only 18 holes of last week’s Dubai Desert Classic before withdrawing with back spasms reportedly unrelated to his multiple microdiscectomy surgeries over the last three years. His agent, Mark Steinberg, was adamant in Dubai that the reason for his WD was not related to the nerve pain in his back that’s kept him off the course in recent years.

A Thursday start at Riviera would have been Woods’ first since he withdrew from the Dubai Desert Classic a week ago after carding a 5-over 77, his worst score in 29 rounds at the Emirates Golf Club. Tiger looked uncomfortable from the very first tee in Dubai, which was a 17-hour flight the week after his first official PGA Tour start in San Diego. Woods winced and walked gingerly through all 18 miserable holes:

Woods made his most recent comeback from injuries at the Hero World Challenge in December. Almost eight weeks after finishing 15th in a 17-player field at the World Challenge, Tiger got in just 36 holes in his first official PGA Tour contest in 17 months when he missed the cut at the Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines.

Woods last played four rounds of a Tour event in August 2015, when he finished T10 at the Wyndham Championship and soon thereafter underwent the second of his three back operations. A lengthy layoff followed until the owner of 14 major titles announced he would play four 2017 tournaments in five weeks, starting with the Farmers.

On a Torrey Pines course on which he had earned eight victories, including his last major win at the 2008 U.S. Open, Woods missed the 36-hole cut for the first time in his career. After the recent MC at Torrey, Woods and his balky back hopped a commercial jet for the long plane ride to Dubai, where he complained of fatigue and slow greens, and looked like the “old man” Brandel Chamblee witnessed playing horribly and walking as if he were stiff and hurting in an ugly opener and closer.

After the round, Woods claimed he was in no pain — a contention that sounded pretty much like an alternative fact when a pre-tourney interview of his admitting “I’m always going to be a little bit sore” surfaced:

It’s undoubtedly a depressing but not totally unexpected development. That it’s come so soon after such a long and cautious layoff is what is so alarming. We expected Tiger to be rusty and not play well and miss some cuts in this four-event-in-five-week comeback to start the year.

That he only lasted three rounds before getting injured and having to sit out an extended stretch again before the Masters was not expected and probably the worst possible way this could have gone.