Tiger Woods withdraws from Dubai Desert Classic

Tiger Woods’ comeback faces a serious hurdle as he withdraws from the Dubai Desert Classic.

What do you make of this? Tiger Woods is throwing in the towel after carding a stale 77 yesterday. The 14-time Major winner claims he is suffering from “back spasms,” a fairly ambiguous ailment that can file next to “deactivated glutes.”

Woods’s agent, Mark Steinberg, a.k.a. the smug, irritating cheese piece, said that he started to feel the spasm late Thursday after dinner.

“Tried to work it out last night, didn’t really get it worked out,” Steinberg said. “[He] had treatment starting pretty early this morning. He can move around, he can’t make a full rotation on the swing.”

Earlier on Thursday, Woods shot a five-over 77, a round in which he hit only 11 of 18 greens in regulation, made no birdies and was 12 shots off the lead.

“The simplest thing is I just play away from pain,” Woods said. “Whether my swing looks classic, rhythmical or it may look unorthodox, I don’t care. As long as I don’t feel that nerve pain.”

after a display last night in Dubai that was hard to watch, Tiger out to 40/1 from 25/1 for 2017 Masters

— Jeff Sherman (@golfodds) February 2, 2017

“Age is cruel and injury is even crueler,” said former “golfer” and smug idiot, Brandel Chamblee, on the Golf Channel.

“And if you are in your 40s and dealing with pain and trying to change your golf swing, that is the trifecta of issues that will put anyone’s game in triage. I look at Tiger and think he looks like an old man. He looks like the oldest 41-year-old man in the history of the game.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=duZKzjP78mI

So what’s the consensus? Is Tiger hiding behind his back issue to avoid a second dose of over par golf? This is utterly conjectural, but I can’t be the only one who thinks this is the boy who cried wolf. As a huge Tiger fan it breaks my heart to see him do this to himself. I wasn’t naive enough to think that he would get back to his winning ways, but I did hope he would at least punch through a few tournaments.

Woods is next scheduled to play two weeks from now at the Genesis Open in Los Angeles, then again at the Honda Classic in Florida before the first major of the year, the Masters at Augusta National.