Tiger Woods unsure of 2009 schedule
Published 11:16 pm Monday, August 25, 2008
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Tiger Woods said he is not sure whether he will be ready to defend his title at the Dubai Desert Classic early next year.
The world’s top-ranked golfer missed the rest of the 2008 season shortly after winning the U.S. Open in June so he could have reconstructive surgery on his left knee to repair a torn ligament.
“It’s frustrating for me,” he said Monday of the injury at an event to promote a golf course he helped design in the Persian Gulf city.
Woods said his schedule heading into next year is uncertain, but that he plans to “be hitting golf balls at the beginning of the year.”
The Dubai Desert Classic begins Jan. 27.
Touted as the first golf course in the world designed by the 2008 U.S. Open champion, the ambitious construction project, remains a work in progress on the outskirts of this Middle Eastern boomtown.
The project’s first stage, which will consist of the 18-hole, par 72 course itself, as well as a golf academy and a driving range, is on target for completion sometime in the last three months of 2009. Among other unlikely features are promises of 5 million square feet of locally grown grass and more than 30,000 full-grown imported trees.
A hotel and most of the gated housing community should be finished by the second or third quarter of 2010.
Woods said he drew inspiration for his first course from clubs in the “sandbelt” golfing region near Melbourne, Australia. “We want this golf course to play fast, quick,” he said, while remaining appealing to a broad range of players.
