Woods’ PGA season on life support

By Deputy Chief EditorAugust 17, 2019

184 2 minutes read

Medinah, Illinois: Tiger Woods' US PGA Tour season is on life support after two lacklustre rounds at the BMW event have left him in danger of missing next week's Tour Championship.

World No.6 Woods, who won the Masters in April to rubberstamp his comeback from spinal fusion surgery, entered this week's BMW Championship at 38th on the FedEx Cup standings.

Tiger Woods is struggling with his back.Credit:AP

But after consecutive rounds of one-under-par 71s at Chicago's Medinah CC, Woods is projected to need a finish of at least 11th to climb inside the top 30 on the FedEx standings, who qualify for the Tour Championship.

Failing to do so would mean Woods would not defend the Tour Championship title he claimed last year, which was his 80th PGA Tour win and first since 2013.

Woods is going to have to go lights-out during the weekend rounds at Medinah, where he won the 1999 and 2006 US PGA Championship.

"I'm going to have to have a great weekend and make a lot of birdies this week and post some rounds in the mid-60s to give myself a chance at it," Woods said.

Woods' ball-striking was superb on Saturday (AEST), finding 11 of 14 fairways and hitting 13 greens in regulation.

But his short game was poor, saving par just once in the five times he missed the green, while he is ranked near the bottom of the BMW field for putting.

Failing to make the play-offs finale would be a disappointing end to Woods' US PGA Tour season, given he completed arguably the greatest individual sporting comeback in history with his 15th major victory in April at Augusta National.

But since then, Woods has teed up in just six tournaments and missed the cut in two of them – the US PGA Championship at Bethpage in May and US Open at Pebble Beach in June.

Both were venues Woods had previously won majors at.

Woods' ailing back is starting to catch up with him after spending 10 months in hiatus in 2017 while he recovered from spinal fusion surgery.

The 43-year-old admitted he is unable to practice as much as he would like.

"Practice is one of the more difficult things because I'm trying to figure out how am I going to practice a lot and train and get treatment and take care of the kids, and there's a lot to it," he said.

Meanwhile, a frustrated Adam Scott has bemoaned a sloppy back nine which left him six shots behind red-hot Hideki Matsuyama, heading into the weekend rounds at the BMW Championship.

Matsuyama made a mockery of the course record, with his nine-under-par 63 beating the previous number by two shots.