Tiger Woods has entered next week’s BMW Championship, the second of three FedEx Cup playoff events, potentially meaning that he would play four events in five weeks, including the U.S. Open.
Woods first needs to qualify for the PGA Tour’s season-ending Tour Championship in two weeks.
“The plan is to play four out of five; that’s the plan,” Woods told ESPN’s Tom Rinaldi and The Associated Press on Wednesday at TPC Boston, site of this week’s Northern Trust in Norton, Massachusetts.
Asked about the fact that it would be the first time in two years that he would play three consecutive weeks, Woods said: “That’s the way it’s going to have to work out… We’re all getting used to the schedule. This is weird for every one of us.”
The U.S. Open was rescheduled to Sept. 17-20 at Winged Foot in suburban New York because of the coronavirus pandemic. Woods played a practice round at Winged Foot on Monday. The U.S. Open begins 10 days after the final round of the Tour Championship.
Woods’ agent, Mark Steinberg, told ESPN that Woods has weighed the difficulty of playing so many events and “he is ready to move on.”
First, he has to do well enough the next two weeks to advance to the Tour Championship at East Lake in Atlanta.
He is 49th in the FedEx Cup standings and needs to move into the top 30. Points for the first two playoff events are three times their value from the regular season, so Woods needs a finish of at least fourth to move into the top 30 after this week — and that’s also dependent on what others do. The Northern Trust has a 36-hole cut.
Next week’s event is for the top 70, and there will be no cut.
During Wednesday’s nine-hole practice round, Woods had gone back to his original Scotty Cameron putter, the one he used to win 14 of his 15 major titles. He went to a different version of the putter two weeks ago at the PGA Championship, where he tied for 37th.