Tiger Woods announces next two PGA Tour starts

Tiger Woods’ first step toward repeating at the Tour Championship begins next week. Woods announced on Twitter Wednesday that he intends to play in the first two events of the FedEx Cup Playoffs, The Northern Trust and the BMW Championship.

While Woods’ newest pair of commitments aren’t necessarily surprising, it does guarantee we’ll see him in back-to-back events for just the second time this year. The only other time Woods played two tournaments consecutively was in February, when he followed up a T-15 at the Genesis Open with a T-10 at the WGC-Mexico Championship.

Ready to begin the FedExCup playoffs starting with @TheNTGolf and then the @BMWChamps. Hope to see you there.

— Tiger Woods (@TigerWoods) July 31, 2019

The top 125 in the FedEx Cup standings advance to the first of three playoff events, next week’s Northern Trust at Liberty National in Jersey City, N.J., and the top 70 move on to the BMW Championship on Aug. 15-18 at Medinah. The top 30 after Medinah advance to the Tour Championship at East Lake on Aug. 22-25 in Atlanta.

At 27th in the FedEx Cup standings prior to this week’s regular-season finale at the Wyndham Championship, Woods will have no trouble qualifying for the BMW Championship, although he’s not yet guaranteed a spot in the Tour Championship, where he’s the defending champion after his stirring victory last season.

Woods is coming off a missed cut at the Open Championship two weeks ago.

“I’m going to take a couple of weeks off and get ready for the playoffs,” Woods said at Royal Portrush. “We’ve got the playoffs coming up, and anything can happen. So get ready for those events, and after that then have a break.”