At the Masters, Brooks Koepka leads and Tiger Woods retires

AUGUSTA, Ga. – Tiger Woods pulled out of the Masters tournament on Sunday, where he finished in last place and openly struggled to overcome the pain of years of injury.

Augusta National Golf Club announced Woods’ withdrawal 75 minutes before the resumption of the third round, which was suspended due to bad weather on Saturday. Woods had completed seven holes of the round and was six over par, bringing his tournament score to nine over after earning his 23rd consecutive Masters cut, tying a record shared by Fred Couples and Gary Player.

In a post on Twitter on Sunday morning, following the Augusta National announcement, Woods attributed his withdrawal to “my plantar fasciitis getting worse again,” a condition he’s been battling for months. In November, it prevented Woods from competing in an event in the Bahamas that he is hosting.

Woods’ decision at the Masters came at a much more prominent time and it was the second time in less than a year that he had withdrawn from a major tournament. Last May, he left the PGA Championship after round three, shooting a nine-over-par 79. He skipped the US Open and then missed the cut at the British Open.

Although Woods, 47, has long struggled with injuries, he’s been struggling especially since a car accident in February 2021 that nearly cost him a leg. He made his return to tournament golf at the Masters last April, finishing 47th, and has said repeatedly that he only expects to compete in a handful of events a year.

“It has been tough and will always be tough,” Woods said Tuesday at Augusta National, where he won the Masters five times, most recently in 2019. “The ability and endurance of what my leg will do going forward will never are the same. I understand that. That’s why I can’t prepare and play as many tournaments as I want, but that’s my future and that’s okay. I’m okay with it.”

For Woods, whose wreck left him with open fractures of the tibia and fibula of his right leg, the challenge of the past golf year was less about his swing and more about the rigors of running 72 holes in four days, especially on a notoriously hilly course like Augusta National. After missing the cut at St Andrews in July, he said it was “hard to just walk and play 18 holes”.

“People have no idea what I have to go through and the hours of work on the body, before and after, every day to do what I just did,” he said after his British Open. Later in 2022, without disclosing more details, he said he had “a few more procedures because of playing” in his year.

The next major tournament begins on May 18, when the PGA Championship is played at Oak Hill Country Club, near Rochester, NY Woods did not say on Sunday whether he plans to be in the field; in February, he said he would “hopefully” appear in all four majors this year.

Although bad weather had caused three interruptions of play during this Masters, tournament officials seemed confident that the competition would end on Sunday as long planned. When the third round ended shortly before noon on Sunday, with only 53 players left in the Masters field, Brooks Koepka had a two stroke lead over Jon Rahm.

Koepka, who was 11 under par, sputtered a bit on the back nine in the third round, including at number 17, where he three putted for the first time in the tournament. Rahm also ran into trouble on the back nine and bogeyed on two holes.

Viktor Hovland, who barely missed a birdie putt on the 18th green at the end of his third round, was eight under.