Tiger Woods adds Valspar, Bay Hill to his pre-Masters schedule

Tiger Woods hopes to get 144 more tournament holes in before Augusta.

The four-time Masters winner announced Friday that before he heads to Magnolia Lane he will start two PGA Tour events — next week’s Valspar Championship, which he has never played, and the Arnold Palmer Invitational, where he owns eight of his 79 tour victories.

The addition of the two dates means Woods, who has competed in three contests this year since returning from his fourth of four back surgeries, will tee it up in four tour tilts in five weeks and go back-to-back at Innisbrook and Bay Hill. The busy schedule must mean Tiger’s back is good to go for the long haul.

Next week, Tiger will reunite with Rory McIlroy, who, after two rounds with the fan magnet at Riviera, probably hopes he’ll once again have a quiet start to the tourney by being “on the opposite end of the draw” from Woods, as he was at the Honda Classic. For McIlroy, who actually fared better in the company of Tiger at the Genesis Open than he did without him at PGA National, it will be his first stint at the Tampa-area tournament as well.

The golf world expected Woods to play Bay Hill, where he has almost a .500 record in his 17 starts. His last appearance at Arnie’s place was in 2013, when he earned his third of five tour wins that season. While he will make his Valspar debut, he did play the Innisbrook course in a team event in 1996.

The former world No. 1, who began the year ranked 656th but has soared up to 389th, was not eligible for this week’s WGC-Mexico Championship. With only the top 64 players in the world qualified to enter match play later this month, he’ll sit that one out as well and will enter the Valspar on the strength of a 12th-place finish at the Honda.

Other marquee names in the Valspar field include Jordan Spieth and Sergio Garcia, while one would-be alternate won’t be around for the festivities.

Such is life on tour with Tiger Woods.