The Big Lead

Jason Day Adds another Withdrawal to His Resume, Pulls out of the Arnold Palmer Invitational

By Michael Shamburger

None
facebooktwitter

Jason Day has added another withdrawal to his resume. Day pulled out of the Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill after six holes on Thursday citing a back injury.

This is hardly the first withdrawal from any event for Day and he had been playing well this season with a T5 and T4 finish in his last two starts. This made me curious as to how many times he has pulled out of not only a PGA Tour event, but any event, so I set out to find out.

Here are the results, minus his mother’s illness and the birth of his son which are obviously excusable.

So, Day has almost as many withdrawals in his PGA Tour career – you could exclude the World Cup of Golf and Australian Open – as he has wins.

Mike McAllister wrote the following for the PGA Tour regarding Day’s issues in 2010:

"For the last 4-1/2 months, ever since the Sony Open in Hawaii, Day has not been healthy. He’s seen six doctors during that span, and he’s heard a variety of diagnoses. First it was bronchitis. Then it was swine flu. Then it was allergies. They kept prescribing different medications, offering different treatment. At The Honda Classic, he had to withdraw and was taken to the emergency room, where doctors took an X-ray of his chest. But he wasn’t getting better. Instead, the medicine he was taking just kept him dizzy and dehydrated on the course."

So, Day has had his fair share of injuries and illnesses over his career, and although we judge him harshly and pick on him for pulling out of so many events, he still wins.

Of course, I could dig further and compare Day’s withdrawal numbers to that of Tiger’s considering he has had his fair share of injuries … so I did.

Between 1995 and 2019 and excluding the 2016 and 2017 season when Woods played in only one event and missed the cut, Woods has only withdrawn from 10 PGA Tour events he was either participating in or scheduled to participate in.

Woods did withdraw from the Arnold Palmer Invitational this week citing a neck strain that appears to be 100% precautionary as he gears up for the Masters.

Here are all the Tweets I could find from the PGA Tour regarding Day’s withdrawals.