Tiger Woods will play in back-to-back weeks for the first time since the latter part of 2015, as he announced on Friday that he will play the Honda Classic next week at PGA National in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla.
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This will be the fifth time Tiger tees it up at the South Florida tournament, an event that wasn’t always in his yearly rotation, but where he played from 2012 through 2014. PGA National is just minutes from his home in Jupiter, Fla.
Though he withdrew from the event in 2014 in his most recent appearance—citing back spasms—Tiger shot a final-round 62 in 2012 en route to a T-2 finish. The 14-time major champion played in the event for the first time as a 17-year-old in 1993 (and missed the cut).
Tiger was playing his front nine at the Genesis Open, run by his Tiger Woods Foundation, at Riviera Country Club, when the news broke—just after the usual 5 p.m. (eastern) deadline required to commit to the next week’s event.
“I think it would be a great sign if I do play. I think it would be a smart sign if I didn’t play,” Tiger was quoted as saying before teeing it up at Riviera. Regardless of whether it’s smart or not, teeing it up on back-to-back weeks for the first time since the 2015 PGA Championship and the Wyndham Championship is a good sign that Tiger’s fused back is feeling OK. As the golf calendar gets closer and closer to the Masters, and Tiger’s possible return to Augusta National, that’s a great sign for Tiger’s fans.
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“I would love to play a full schedule in 2018,” Woods wrote on his website on Dec. 29. “What that entails, including back-to-back events, I don’t know. … This is all unchartered territory.”
The Honda Classic will be the third official event in which the 42-year-old, who owns 79 career PGA Tour titles, the last of which came at the 2013 WGC-Bridgestone Invitational, will have teed it up in 2018.
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