When Tiger Woods walked out of the physio trailer on Friday morning at THE NORTHERN TRUST and left the property, all we knew was that he was withdrawing due to an oblique strain. At the time, all he said to address his status for this week was a line saying that he would remain “hopeful that he could compete next week”.
Well, next week is here and as of this writing, it would appear that Tiger Woods is going to tee it up at Medinah. Not only is he still listed on the field list for the week, but he is also still listed on the Pro-Am list for Wednesday, going off the first tee with the first tee time at 6:50 am.
The multi-million dollar question is though, once 12:54 pm ET Thursday comes (the time of his scheduled first-round tee time), will he be on the first tee with playing partners C.T. Pan and Billy Horschel?
Since withdrawing from last week’s event, Tiger has fallen down to 38th in the FedEx Cup standings. Since only the top 30 make it to East Lake (where he won last year), Tiger would need an impressive week at the BMW.
[irp posts=”127940″ name=”Tiger Woods withdraws from THE NORTHERN TRUST”]
How impressive you may ask?
Well, in order to get into the top 30 and defend his title at East Lake, Tiger Woods will need a solo 11th place finish or better this week.
While the sample size is small, Tiger has only finished solo 11th or better 4 times this year, one of those being his Masters win.
Do the math on all that, and it would appear that the odds of Tiger finishing high enough this week to qualify for the Tour Championship are not in his favor. Given that, the question becomes, does Tiger give it a go anyway just to see what he can do? Or, does he hang it up and call it a season one week early?
While I don’t have any inside information, it would appear to make the most sense for Tiger to just call it a season and get his body ready for Japan in the fall as well as his Presidents Cup duties. What he actually is going to do remains to be seen. Although with his pro-am tee time scheduled for 6:50 am local time tomorrow, the next 24 hours will tell us a lot.