Another setback for ailing Tiger
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E-mail Shanghai Daily, August 5, 2014
Tiger Woods was at Firestone, and the scene looked all too familiar.
Except he wasn't hoisting a trophy. He could barely bend over to pick up his tee.
Right when Woods thought he was making small progress toward his return from back surgery, he suffered a scary setback on Sunday when he was stricken with more back pain and withdrew after eight holes from the Bridgestone Invitational.
How bad was it? Woods headed home to find out if he could play the PGA Championship this week.
But as he stood next to his car, he struggled to even take off his golf shoes before his caddie drove him away into an uncertain future.
The lasting images of Woods at Firestone were not of him winning, like he did last year for the eighth time. They were of Woods wincing, hobbling and twitching. Those were the scenes from earlier this year when he coped with recurring back pain that forced him to withdraw from the Honda Classic and eventually led to back surgery March 31.
In his third tournament since returning from surgery, this had the look of a serious setback.
Woods injured himself playing a shot from edge of a bunker on the par-5 second hole. With all weight on his right leg, he took an awkward slash at the ball, fell back toward the sand and landed with a thud, and kept jogging out of the bunker from sheer momentum of the steep drop.
"I just jarred it, and it's been spasming ever since," Woods told a PGA Tour official before leaving.
Woods kept playing, hitting a number of shockingly bad shots, finally giving up on the ninth hole. "It's just the whole lower back," he said. "I don't know what happened."
With the pain he showed leaving the course — and just four months removed from back surgery — it would seem unlikely that Woods plays next week at Valhalla, where he won the PGA Championship in 2000.
If Woods does not play in the PGA Championship, that would be the end of his season. He would have to win the PGA to be eligible for the FedEx Cup playoffs.
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