Tiger Woods Withdraws from the Masters

AUGUSTA, Ga. — Tiger Woods withdrew on Sunday from the Masters Match, the place he was in final place and overtly struggling to beat the agony of years of accidents.

Augusta Nationwide Golf Membership introduced Woods’s withdrawal 75 minutes earlier than the resumption of the third spherical, which was suspended Saturday due to dangerous climate. Woods had accomplished seven holes of the spherical and was six over par, bringing his match rating to 9 over after he had made his twenty third consecutive Masters reduce, tying a file shared by Fred {Couples} and Gary Participant.

In a post on Twitter on Sunday morning, after Augusta Nationwide’s announcement, Woods attributed his withdrawal to “reaggravating my plantar fasciitis,” a situation he has handled for months.

Woods’s determination marked the second time in lower than a yr that he withdrew from a serious match. Final Could, he left the P.G.A. Championship after the third spherical, when he had shot a nine-over-par 79. He skipped the U.S. Open after which missed the reduce on the British Open.

Though Woods, 47, has lengthy grappled with accidents, he has particularly struggled since a automobile wreck in February 2021 that almost value him a leg. He made his return to match golf on the Masters final April, when he completed forty seventh, and has repeatedly stated he expects to enter solely a handful of occasions every year.

“It has been powerful and can at all times be powerful,” Woods stated on Tuesday at Augusta Nationwide, the place he has gained the Masters 5 instances, most not too long ago in 2019. “The flexibility and endurance of what my leg will do going ahead won’t ever be the identical. I perceive that. That’s why I can’t put together and play as many tournaments as I like, however that’s my future and that’s OK. I’m OK with that.”

For Woods, whose wreck left him with open fractures of the tibia and fibula of his proper leg, the problem of the final yr in golf has been much less about his swing and extra in regards to the rigors of strolling 72 holes over 4 days, particularly at a notoriously hilly course like Augusta Nationwide. After he missed the reduce at St. Andrews in July, he stated it had been “exhausting simply to stroll and play 18 holes.”

“Individuals don’t know what I’ve to undergo and the hours of the work on the physique, pre and put up, every single day to do what I simply did,” he stated after his British Open ended. Later in 2022, he stated, with out disclosing extra particulars, that his yr had included present process “a couple of extra procedures due to taking part in.”

Though poor climate has pressured three suspensions of play throughout this Masters, match officers hoped to finish the competitors on Sunday, with the ultimate spherical scheduled to start at 12:30 p.m. Jap time. When Augusta Nationwide introduced Woods’s withdrawal, bringing the Masters subject to 53 gamers, Brooks Koepka held a four-stroke lead over Jon Rahm. They have been on the seventh gap when play ended on Saturday.