They’re still crying in their beer at Innisbrook.
No, Tiger Woods will not play in the Valspar next week. It was a longshot at best, no way he’d play three straight tournaments and the folks in Tampa Bay should know that.
On Saturday at The Players, Woods confirmed that he’ll show up in Austin for the WGC Match Play as his final warmup before 2019 The Masters.
“I’m guaranteed to play three rounds in a couple weeks, and so that’s basically like a tournament and we’ll see from there,” Woods said. “The whole idea is not, as I told you guys at the end of last year, I’m not going to play as much as I did last year. That was an awful lot.”
Woods has not played the Match Play since 2013, when it was a single-elimination tournament held at Dove Mountain in Arizona. He lost, 2 and 1, to Charles Howell III in the opening round that year. The event moved to Austin Country Club in 2016, a course Woods has never played before, and now utilizes a round-robin format with four-man groups. Woods has never played a competitive tournament the week before the Masters in his 22-year pro career.
