DUBAI — Former world No. 1 Tiger Woods said he would compete in the European Tour’s Dubai Desert Classic next month as he charts his comeback from injury.
“I’ve always enjoyed playing in Dubai and it’s fantastic to see how the city has grown phenomenally from when I first started playing there,” Woods said on the event website (www.dubaidesertclassic.com) Thursday.
Woods, sidelined by back pain for the past 15 months, will launch his official comeback at the Jan. 26-29 Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines in southern California, the PGA Tour event announced Wednesday.
The Desert Classic at Emirates golf Club is the longest-running European Tour event in the region and takes place from Feb. 2-5.
Woods has also committed to play the Feb. 16-19 Genesis Open at Riviera, California, and his hometown tournament, the Honda Classic in south Florida, the following week as he leads up to the Masters in Augusta in April.
He is expected to play the March 16-19 Arnold Palmer Invitational in Orlando, Florida, an event he has won a record eight times.
The 41-year-old American has not played an official money event since Aug. 2015 and pulled out of a planned return at the first event of the 2016-17 season in northern California in October.
He said then that his game was not ready but the 14-times major champion subsequently made his comeback at the Hero World Challenge, an unofficial PGA Tour event, in the Bahamas in December where he finished 15th in an 18-man field.
Woods will be making his eighth appearance in Dubai, where he has won twice and is 92-under par for the 28 rounds he has played there since 2001.
He joins world No. 2 Rory McIlroy, Sweden’s British Open champion Henrik Stenson and Masters winner Danny Willett among leading players at an event dubbed the ‘Major of the Middle East’.
“It was great winning in Dubai in 2006 and 2008. When you win in Dubai, you know you’ve beaten an outstanding field,” said Woods.
Matsuyama aims high in 2017
A sizzling finish to 2016 has Hideki Matsuyama focused more than ever on his golfing goals this year, among them a major title and perhaps the world No. 1 ranking.
“Becoming number one in the world is the goal I think of all of us out here,” Matsuyama told reporters this week as he prepared to tee it up Thursday in the USPGA Tour Tournament of Champions at Kapalua, Hawaii.
“I still have some weak links in my game that I have to work on, but hopefully little by little, I’ll be able to improve and to fix what I need to, and hopefully some day compete for number one.”
Not many weaknesses have been apparent in Matsuyama’s game of late.
Since late October he has won four of five starts — with one runner-up finish as well.
The world No. 6 player’s bid to rise will be one of the chief storylines of a 2017 in which the return from injury of Tiger Woods and Australian Jason Day’s bid to stay atop the world rankings will also be in the spotlight.
After a fifth-placed finish at the US PGA Tour Championship, Matsuyama won the Japan Open and the World golf Championships HSBC Champions in October, the Taiheiyo Masters in November and the Tiger Woods-hosted Hero World Challenge in the first week of December.
He also squeezed in a second place finish at the CIMB Classic.
It was a sensational end to a 2016 that started with a victory in the USPGA Tour Phoenix Open and included a tie for seventh at the Masters and a fourth-placed finish at the PGA Championship.
“The expectations of people around me are high,” he said.
He says there are still things in his game he wants to improve.
Matsuyama said, he’s got to stay true to the skills that have brought him this far, the skills that have prompted Jordan Spieth and Woods to predict that Matsuyama will be among the game’s elite for years to come.
“I’ve got to just be my own guy,” Matsuyama said. “I just have to play my own game and not try to live up to anybody else’s expectations except myself.” — Agencies
