Tiger Woods, hoping to find respite from his personal woes on the golf course, instead finds his comeback prospects clouded after injury forced him out of the Players Championship.
Woods returned to competition at the Masters last month in the wake of shocking revelations of marital infidelities that rocked his marriage and cost him some of the sponsors that made him the first billion-dollar sportsman.
An encouraging tie for fourth at Augusta National was followed last week by his failure to make the cut at the Quail Hollow Championship in Charlotte, North Carolina.
PHOTO: AFP
The latest blow came on Sunday, when Woods withdrew on the seventh hole of the final round of the Players Championship complaining of neck pain.
He had pronounced himself “100 percent” fit prior to the tournament, but on Sunday he owned up.
“I’ve been playing with a bad neck for a while,” Woods said. “I might have a bulging disk.”
It was the first time as a professional that Woods had withdrawn from a tournament mid-round. As a 19-year-old amateur, he withdrew from the 1995 US Open after hurting his wrist.
For the first time in his career, he finished outside the top 30 in consecutive tournaments.
Masters champ Phil Mickelson was unable to seize his chance to take the world No. 1 ranking from Woods with a Players victory, but a prolonged injury absence would further jeopardize Woods’ five-year reign.
“I’m having a hard time with the pain,” said Woods, who in the past has been an iron man.
He won the 2008 US Open playing with a damaged left knee and two stress fractures in his leg.
Woods’ description of his symptoms — pain and tingling in his right fingers — immediately provoked a welter of expert theorizing, including one explanation from a doctor on the ESPN sports network who demonstrated with a model of a human spine.
Reference to neck pain also recalled Woods’ infamous Nov. 27 car crash, which sent him to the hospital and heralded the start of a scandal in which more than a dozen women have said they had sex with the married father of two.
Woods’ only prior public reference to a neck problem came at the Masters, when he listed a “busted-up lip and a pretty sore neck” as the only injuries he suffered in the mystery crash.
Whether the current problem is related to the accident is anybody’s guess, but it will certainly fuel a fresh round of speculation now that Woods has become favorite fodder for tabloids and Internet celebrity gossip sites.
Golf fans will be hoping to hear soon just how serious the injury is, and how it might affect his schedule.
Woods wasn’t expected to play the next three US PGA Tour events, but had been widely expected to defend his title at the Memorial tournament from June 3 to June 6 before tackling the US Open at Pebble Beach from June 17 to June 20.
Woods won the US Open the last time it was played at Pebble by a stunning 15 strokes.
He had said on Saturday that he needs more competitive rounds before the next major championship of the year.
Taiwanese world No. 1 women’s doubles star Hsieh Su-wei on Saturday overcame a first-set loss to win her opening match at the Madrid Open. Top seeds Hsieh and partner Elise Mertens of Belgium, with whom she last month won her fourth Indian Wells women’s doubles title, bounced back from a rocky first set to beat Asia Muhammad of the US and Aldila Sutjiadi of Indonesia 2-6, 6-4, 10-2. Hsieh and Mertens were next to face Heather Watson of the UK and Xu Yifan of China in the round of 16. Thirty-eight-year-old Hsieh last month reclaimed her world No. 1 spot after her Indian
EYES ON THE PRIZE: Armed with three solid men’s singles shuttlers and doubles Olympic champions, Taiwan aim to make their first Thomas Cup semi-final, Chou Tien-chen said Taiwanese badminton star Tai Tzu-ying yesterday quickly dispatched Malaysia’s Goh Jin Wei in straight sets, while her male counterpart Chou Tien-chen beat Germany’s Kai Schaefer, as Taiwan’s women’s and men’s teams won their Group B opening rounds of the TotalEnergies BWF Thomas and Uber Cup Finals in Chengdu, China. World No. 5 Tai beat Goh 21-19, 22-20 in a speedy 33 minutes, her fourth straight victory over the world No. 24 shuttler since they first faced each other in the quarter-finals of the 2018 Malaysia Open, where Tai went on to win the women’s singles title. Malaysia followed up Tai’s opening victory
Chen Yi-tung (陳奕通) secured a historic Olympic berth on Sunday by winning the senior men’s foil event at the 2024 Asia Oceania Zonal Olympic Fencing Qualifiers in United Arab Emirates. Chen defeated Samuel Elijah of Singapore 15-4 in the final in Dubai to secure the only wild card in the event, making him the first male Olympian fencer from Taiwan in 36 years and only the sixth Taiwanese fencer to ever qualify for the quadrennial event. The last appearance by a Taiwanese male fencer at the Olympics was in 1988, when Wang San-tsai (王三財) and Cheng Ming-hsiang (鄭明祥) competed in Seoul. The
A soccer jersey carrying a national map including disputed Western Sahara has become a hot commodity in Morocco after a diplomatic dispute with Algeria. Retailers said RS Berkane jerseys have been flying off the shelves after a Confederation of African Football (CAF) Cup match against Algerian club USM Alger was canceled last month over the jerseys. “We are overwhelmed by the influx of messages and requests,” said Brahim Rabii, representative of the official RS Berkane jersey distributor. Algeria broke off diplomatic relations with Morocco in 2021, partly over the issue of Western Sahara. The former Spanish colony is largely controlled by Morocco, but claimed