Going down quicker than the Lusitania, the onetime titan of the fairways, Eldrick “Tiger” Woods, plummeted to #62 in the latest World Golf Rankings, marking his lowest standing since 1996, the year he joined the tour.
On Friday at the Farmers Open at Torrey Pines, where he has won eight times since his days as a junior golfer, Tiger withdrew from the tournament unable to even bend over and pick up his own tee. On his twelfth hole Woods shuffled to the green, picked up his ball, supported his surgically repaired lower back with his right hand, and signaled “No Mas!” to his playing partners Billy Horschel and Rickie Fowler.
Woods’s withdrawal for the third time in his last eight tournaments inspired Kelly Tilghman of Golf Channel to tweet:
Tiger blamed the fog delay as the reason for his back seizing on him. “I got cold standing out there and everything started deactivating again…. It’s frustrating that I just can’t stay active. That’s just the way it is. We usually don’t have to wait like this back home practicing. You can keep going and going. My glutes are shutting off and they don’t activate.”
Woods now falls behind in the rankings to some of the the legends of golf: #31 Stephen Gallacher, #36 Bernd Wiesberger, #37 Anirban Lahiri, #53 Mikko Ilonen, and #39 Thongchai Jaidee.