Tiger Woods skipping Honda Classic in favor of Bay Hill, PLAYERS

Tiger Woods said that he wanted to play fewer tournaments in 2019 than he did last year, but the question remained – which tournament would fall first? We have our answer: Woods has removed the Honda Classic from this year’s plans.

Tiger Woods is nothing if not a creature of habit. That may not be more true in any sense of his career than it is in his schedule planning. We all know about the way he wants to “peak” for the four majors, but when it comes to planning, you can almost call his shots before he even announces anything.

Or so I thought. Back in December, I actually sat down and planned out his entire slate for the 2019 PGA TOUR season, and I came to a tough reality. I couldn’t figure out which events he would be willing to pass on, for a number of reasons. This week, though, was an early turning point that I faced in that prediction. And today, Woods gave us some additional clarity in his planning.

Woods (well, his team, but you know how this works) took to Twitter on Thursday to announce what had to be a tough cut from the 2019 slate: he’ll be skipping the Honda Classic, a tournament he has played in his last four healthy seasons.

Unfortunately, due to the schedule this year, I cannot play all the events I want to. I will be taking next week off and playing in the @APinv and @THEPLAYERSChamp. Sorry to miss seeing Jack and everyone at Honda.
— Tiger Woods (@TigerWoods) February 21, 2019

The WGC Mexico Championship came into existence when the event moved away from Doral, a place where Woods won seven times between 1999 and 2013. As hard of a time as I had believing that Tiger Woods might consider skipping a World Golf Championship, this one was one of the few events I really thought could get cut.

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I figured it really came down to two things: the World Ranking points (and FedEx Cup bonus) that go with the WGC events, or his connection with Jack and Barbara Nicklaus, whose Children’s Health Care Foundation is supported by both the Honda Classic and The Memorial Tournament.

While Woods skipping next week’s event at PGA National is a bit of a surprise – it’s basically a home game less than an hour away from Jupiter, Fla. – it’s also easy to justify from a golf point of view. Woods has only played the event four times, and while he finished as runner-up to Rory McIlroy (who became the World No. 1) in 2012, that was also the only time he’s really contended.

Meanwhile, he gets an extra week of rest before heading to the Arnold Palmer Invitational and THE PLAYERS Championship, with his combined 10 career victories at Bay Hill and TPC Sawgrass. From there, I still believe he takes a week off to go into the WGC Match Play, then as Bill Belichick would say, he’s on to the Masters.

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I’m sure there will be plenty of adjustments to Tiger’s schedule still to come in 2019, but this is just further proof that he’s planning on truly competing at the highest level through the rest of the year. And I don’t think I’m alone in saying that if skipping a few events brings us a better Tiger, I’m totally ready for that, too.

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