Golf superstar Tiger Woods has withdrawn midway through the second round of the Genesis Invitational due to illness, the US PGA Tour said on Friday.
Tiger Woods, who hosts the tournament at The Riviera Country Club, had teed off on the seventh hole but was soon seen being taken from the course in a golf cart in a moody state
The 15-time major champion was playing his first US PGA Tour event since withdrawing from the third round at the Masters last April.
Two weeks after that, he had ankle surgery due to lingering pain in his right foot from injuries he sustained in a car crash in 2021
Woods’s longtime business partner Rob McNamara said Woods had felt “flu-like symptoms” on Thursday night.
“Woke up this morning, they were worse than the night previous,” McNamara said.
“He had a little bit of a fever and was better during the warm-up, but then when he got out there and was walking and playing, he started feeling dizzy.
“Ultimately the doctors are saying he’s got potentially some type of flu and that he was dehydrated.
He’s been treated with an IV bag and doing much, much better,” he added.
The 48-year-old said in December at the unofficial Hero World Challenge that he hoped his various physical problems would allow him to play up to one tournament a month.
After his first competitive round in more than 10 months on Thursday he admitted the jury was still out on whether that plan would pan out and whether it would even allow him to be competitive.
“I’m hoping that’s the case, hoping that I play that much.
“As far as the physical ups and downs, that’s just part of my body, part of what it is,” Woods said.
Woods acknowledged on Thursday that he lacked “sharpness”.
He said he struggled to adjust to the speed of the greens, part of an overall inability to make adjustments “on the fly.”
