Tiger Woods’ comeback to official PGA Tour action was unfortunately short-lived. Just like his last start at last year’s Masters Tournament, Tiger was forced to pull out of the Genesis Open on Friday after not even a round and a half.
The good news to come out of this, if anything? It’s reportedly due to an illness, not any injury issues.
Tiger is no doubt dealing with years of scar tissue in his legs and back at all times, yet he said back in November that he’s striving to play one tournament per month in 2024.
Seeing him get carted off the course at Riviera sucks, though. The other thing is, even if this is, in fact, illness-related, Tiger indicated after yesterday’s first round that he was dealing with back spasms, which led to a shank on the 18th hole.
At the par-5 first on Friday, Tiger striped a drive and had a decent look at eagle before tapping in for birdie. He bogeyed Nos. 4 and 5 to drop to +1 on the day, and after finding the fairway on the par-4 seventh, he decided to withdraw. My former very-distant colleague Riggs is speculating that an In-N-Out burger might be to blame for Tiger’s potentially foodborne illness.
Who knows what the issue is. It has to be bad if it makes a competitive legend like Tiger pack it in with more than two rounds potentially ahead if he were to make the weekend cut. Since Tiger was sitting one stroke below the even-par cut line at the time of his withdrawal, and clearly didn’t think he was going to feel any better any time soon, I don’t blame him for making this judgment call.
Gotta say, I was really nervous that it was an aggravated injury when I first saw him riding into the clubhouse on that golf cart. Thank goodness Tiger is in relatively good health from a physical standpoint. This shouldn’t derail his efforts to tee it up again whenever he desires. My guess is, going off the one month/one tournament rule, we’ll see Tiger again either at the Arnold Palmer Invitational or THE PLAYERS Championship in March.
Until then, hang in there, Tiger…
