Golf: Tiger Woods not yet ready to work

Tiger Woods can afford a smile. Photo / AP

Masters champion Tiger Woods is not ready to get back to work.

Woods did not enter the Wells Fargo Championship this week at Quail Hollow, meaning he likely will go an entire month without playing until the PGA Championship at Bethpage Black on May 16-19.

"He's not ready to go," said Mark Steinberg, his agent at Excel Sports Management. "The Masters took a lot out of him. He's not hurt but he is being smart."

This would be only the third time in his career Woods did not play between majors. He went nine weeks between the Masters and US Open in 2006 when his father died, and eight weeks between the Masters and US Open in 2008 when his left leg was badly injured. He won both the latter events.

In an interview with GOLFTV, Woods said he hasn't started preparing for his next event and that his fifth green jacket — his 15th major and 81st career PGA Tour victory — had not sunk in.

"I have not started doing anything," he said. "I've just been laying there. And every now and again, I'll look over there on the couch and there's the jacket."

The only other tournament before the PGA Championship — which moved to May this year for the first time since 1949 — is the AT&T Byron Nelson, which is held on links-styled Trinity Forest in Dallas.

The PGA Championship is the only major in which Woods competed the week before but that was when it was in August and he played either the Buick Open at Warwick Hills or the Bridgestone Invitational at Firestone, both tree-lined courses.

Woods won at Quail Hollow in 2007, although his results have been mixed since.

It is the only PGA Tour event where he has missed the 36-hole cut twice, in 2010 and n 2012. He returned last year and tied for 55th.

"He's not ready mentally or physically but the physical side is not that he's hurt," Steinberg said.

Woods said in the GOLFTV interview that he has started thinking about the PGA Championship but that he has not started devoting hours to working on his game.

- AP