SAN DIEGO (AP) — Tiger Woods is trying to avoid something he has never done in all his years playing at Torrey Pines.

He has never left the tournament on a Friday.

Woods bailed out on Thursday the last time he played the Farmers Insurance Open in 2015 when he stopped after 11 holes because of tightness in his back. The year before that, he was forced out on a Saturday when he missed the 54-hole cut.

He has won six times on a Sunday, twice on a Monday.

In his return to the PGA Tour after a 17-month layoff to heal from two back surgeries, the objective now is simply to make the cut. Woods didn’t make it easy on himself when he played a six-hole stretch in 6-over par on the back nine of the opening round Thursday and shot a 4-over 76.

He goes into the second round five shots outside the cut line.

If he’s sent packing on Friday, it will be the eighth time in his last 15 starts against a full field that Woods failed to make the cut. This from a guy who once went seven years without missing a cut.

Was it a surprise?

Not really, because not even Woods knew what to expect after having been gone from the tour for so long. More than his fighting his swing — it took him nine holes before he hit what could be considered a good short iron into the green — it was getting used to tournament golf.

That could be expected.

“So much is different,” he said. “Playing in slower conditions. It’s much softer than what we have at home. It’s much cooler than what we have at home. It’s just different. I’m trying to get used to a little bit of this, and I was fighting throughout the day, and I just didn’t quite get it done after the middle part of that back nine.”

And that’s where it all fell apart.

He made his first birdie in 523 days — a number skewed by the fact it had been 523 days since his last PGA Tour appearance — on the 10th hole when he hit a wedge from the first cut of rough into 10 feet. He followed that with a tee shot into 10 feet for another birdie. That put him at 1 under.

“And it went the other way,” he said.

It was a little bit of everything, and it all happened so fast, even in the midst of what Woods referred to as a lot of waiting around.

No. 12: A bad tee shot to the right landed in rough so wet and thick that he used a fairway metal to chop down and gouge out the shot. He advanced it only 120 yards, still in the rough, hacked the next one out to 15 feet and missed the par putt.

No. 13: A tee shot into the rough, and an iron that stayed in the rough, so deep that Woods had to lift the ball to identify it. He did extremely well to hammer that out with a wedge onto the green some 50 feet away. Instead of getting out of there with par, he left his first putt 10 feet short and three-putted for bogey.

No. 14: A 3-wood off the tee that found the left rough and kept him from reaching the green. His pitch from short grass in front of the green came up 18 feet short, and the par putt spun out of the lip.

No. 15: A snap-hook over the gallery and down into a ravine. Woods started to go down to look for it until he realized even if he found it, he would have no shot. So he took a penalty drop, hooked an iron through the trees into more rough, hit wedge to 25 feet and two-putted for double bogey.

No. 17: His 3-wood drifted just enough to the right to find more deep rough. He gouged another fairway metal out into the front bunker, blasted out nicely to 6 feet and missed the par putt.

At least he made a birdie on the 18th which brought out a smile, perhaps because a long, tough day was finally over.

“I was fighting out there all day,” Woods said. “Didn’t really hit it that good. Greens were a little tough out there with some of the putts and I had a round which I let slip away in the middle part of the back nine and unfortunately didn’t hit very good shots.”

It might have been worse had he not made four tough par saves on the front nine, and if Jason Day and Dustin Johnson played better. Johnson birdied the 18th for a 72. Day missed four putts from the 4-foot range and shot 73.

Day pleaded to be patient with Woods.

“Having 17 months off is a very, very long time,” Day said. “I think everyone was kind of anticipating what the comeback would look like. But once again, I said it over the last couple days, we can’t just break down everything he did today because it’s been 17 months. Let him go a year, let him play and go from there. … We can’t panic too much at the start of the year.”

SINGAPORE (Reuters) – Golf has come a long way since Tiger Woods changed the nature of the sport following his maiden major triumph 20 years ago – courses are longer, players are fitter and equipment is advancing as quickly as technology will allow.

Fans, however, are divided on what they want to see at the big events with the ones that love nothing more than an endless stream of birdies opposed by those who delight when the top players struggle to break par in semi-hurricane conditions.

When Woods won the 1997 U.S. Masters with a staggering 18-under total it appeared no course could withstand the best in the game. Yet 10 years later, Zach Johnson claimed the same event at Augusta in freezing conditions with a one-over tally.

Players admit that while the weather is one of the major factors in determining the outcome of a tournament, courses do not have to be outrageously long to offer up any sort of resistance to the current crop of top professionals.

“What’s interesting is that if a course is short and firm, it will play tougher than a long and wet one,” Australian world number seven Adam Scott told reporters ahead of the Singapore Open on Wednesday.

“So it seems the golf clubs, tournaments and the set-up committees are struggling to find a balance for us because the separation between a professional and a regular golfer is greater than ever and we play completely different games now.

“To have a course long enough for us is almost impossible yet everyone wants a course that can challenge a pro. But if they are short and firm, like Hilton Head for example, shooting under par is a good score.”

BEAT THE PRO

Scott admitted that while scores on links courses exposed to the elements were as fickle as the winds that blew across them, conditions at some of the major tournaments in the United States had become a little too extreme.

“For them to be set up where five-over is a winning score is almost so unplayable that if you are not playing five-over and winning, I think its getting away from golf in my opinion,” the 36-year-old 2013 Masters champion added.

“We are losing balls at U.S. Opens five yards away from the green in some of the grass but I guess its a testament to how good the players are now, how good you have to be and how difficult they have to set a course up to ‘beat the pro’.

Fellow major winner Ernie Els said he preferred a tougher course set-up while adding that leading professionals had become so skilful that the kind of dominance Woods enjoyed for more than decade would be almost impossible to emulate.

“When I was in my prime, I always wanted to play at venues where it was really quite difficult as I felt I had a better chance,” the South African said.

“Nowadays, to separate yourself from the rest you have to really do something special and that will become more difficult to do. But if the weather plays along at this year’s major championships, you could see scores of around par again.”

By John O’Brien (Editing by Pritha Sarkar)

A day after finishing runner-up at the BMW SA Open in South Africa, world No. 2 Rory McIlroy withdrew from this week’s Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship in the United Arab Emirates, citing a rib injury.

“It’s bitterly disappointing to have to withdraw from the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship,” McIlroy said in a statement released by the European Tour. “I think everyone knows how much I love playing this tournament, which is one of the best on the European Tour.

“To be forced to miss this week through injury is really quite annoying to be perfectly honest, but I am sure the tournament will be a huge success and I hope everyone involved has a great week. In situations like this you simply have to listen to the experts, and the team I have consulted have all advised me to rest until my rib has fully recovered.”

McIlroy first experienced a tweaking pain on Friday in Johannesburg, suggesting that there was a modest chance he would have withdrawn ahead of his second round. Instead, he played through the issue, losing to champion Graeme Storm on the third hole of a sudden-death playoff. Afterward, McIlroy said he would seek out an MRI on Monday to find out more about his injury. As it turns out, it was not the back that was the source of the issue, rather a rib problem.

The four-time major winner suggested that the source of his injury may have been extensive off-season practice to identify the equipment he would use to start 2017 for the beginning of his first full season without Nike Golf in the equipment business since signing on with the Swoosh. Other critics will point to McIlroy’s extensive gym and fitness work as a hindrance, but that’s unclear. What is clear is that McIlroy’s schedule may change by more than one start, and that could mean messing up a pace McIlroy hoped would lead him to Augusta National in proper form to win his first Masters title and complete the career Grand Slam.