Tiger Woods Withdraws From Northern Trust Open, A Tournament He Probably Shouldn’t Have Played In To Begin With

Tiger Woods withdrew from The Northern Trust Open prior to the second-round on Friday due to an oblique strain. It is the first time Woods has withdrawn during a tournament since the 2017 Dubai Desert Classic. The WD comes after an opening round 4-over 75 on Thursday.

During the pro-am event on Wednesday, Woods cited he had some stiffness in his back. He was cautious with things and didn’t hit full shots for the majority of the pro-am.

This week’s start at Liberty National was Woods’ first since The Open, where he looked beyond exhausted and uninterested en route to a missed cut. I wrote that the best gameplan for Woods following The Open was to not play tournament golf again until 2020 to simply rest.

This raises the question, why did Tiger decide to tee it up this week?

On one side it’s a pretty simple answer, this week was the first event of the FedEx Cup Playoffs. Perhaps he felt obligated and felt ready to go after taking four weeks off.

On the flip-side, Woods was qualified and committed to play in next week’s BMW Championship outside Chicago and maybe one more week of rest would’ve been the smart move. The argument to that however is he would have been giving up valuable FedEx Cup points by not playing this week, but it turned out to be the same result with the WD.

There is no denying that this is a unique spot Woods finds himself in. He won the Masters just four months ago and snagged a T-9 finish at the Memorial back in June showing his game is still very much there. The game may be there at times, but Father Time and a handful of surgeries and injuries are always there for the 43-year-old.

I think it’s safe to say Woods wants to be out there, but he’s also been playing things safe and conservative which his limited schedule this year is a direct reflection of that. It’s a bit of a give-and-take situation and finding that balance can’t be easy.

Woods was the game of golf for years and completed what may very well be the greatest comeback story in sports history with his win at Augusta this year. He knows what he’s capable of when he’s on, maybe thought he could find that magic again this week, but his body held him back.

With all of this laid out there, it didn’t make too much sense for Woods to tee it up at The Northern Trust or any FedEx Cup Playoff event at all for that matter.

Sure, he would be missing out on potentially winning millions of dollars by not teeing it up, but sacrificing the opportunity to get one-hundred percent healthy heading into 2020 with an event or two circled heading into next year’s Masters sounds like a pretty solid plan. Then again, Woods’ gameplan over the years has fared pretty well over the years to say the least.

If Tiger decided to not make another start in 2019 there isn’t a golf fan, media member or analyst that would be upset or question that decision.

The poor performance at The Open, the WD at The Northern Trust and even if he threw the clubs in the garage for the rest of the year are all excusable, anything Tiger does on the course for the remainder of the year is, thanks to what happened back in April.