Woods withdraws from Dubai with bad back

Tiger Woods has withdrawn from the Omega Dubai Desert Classic because of a bad back.

Woods failed to register a single birdie in his five-over-par 77 opening round and faced an uphill battle to make the cut.

The 14-time major winner has only just returned to competitive action after 15 months out following two back operations and speaking ahead of the tournament he admitted that his latest swing has been designed to "play away from pain".

He had been due to play alongside Danny Willett and Matthew Fitzpatrick on Friday but he withdrew ahead of his second round after suffering a back spasm.

His agent Mark Steinberg revealed the former world number one suffered a back spasm on Thursday night.

"He felt okay coming off the golf course yesterday so he wasn't in pain," Steinberg said.

"I didn't see him at dinner but he said he was okay and went into a spasm in his lower back, fairly late last night after dinner.

"He tried to work it out last night, didn't really get it worked out. He had treatment starting pretty early this morning for probably the past three, three and a half hours.

"He says it's not the nerve pain that's kept him out for so long. He says it's a back spasm and he just can't get the spasm to calm down. So that's where we are.

"He feels terrible, talked to Matthew (Fitzpatrick) and Danny (Willett), he feels awful and he feels terrible for the tournament. He wanted to be here. He wants to be here. He just feels terrible that he can't, you know, finish it out today.

"He can move around, he can't make a full rotation on the swing.

"The fact that he feels as though it's not the nerve pain, that's very encouraging for him.

"The short-term prognosis, he hopes he'll be strong based on the fact that it's not that nerve pain."

At times he looked to be in pain during his opening round but he downplayed suggestions that he had suffered an injury setback.

"No, I wasn't in pain at all. I was just trying to hit shots and I wasn't doing a very good job. At the end I finally hit some good ones but the damage had already been done," he said after the opening round.

After making his return in the Hero World Challenge in December, Woods took part in last week's Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines but he missed the cut after rounds of 76 and 72.

He is due to play in the Genesis Open at Riviera and the Honda Classic at PGA National but it remains to be seen if he will be fit to compete in the events on the PGA Tour.

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