PGA officials and Tiger Woods’ agent denied Monday that Woods has been suspended by the tour.
In an interview Friday with a Michigan radio station, Dan Olsen, a relative unknown on the Tour, said an exempt player told him that Woods had been suspended, possibly for a failed drug test.
“It’s not testosterone, but it’s something else. I think when it’s all said and done, he’s gonna surpass Lance Armstrong with infamy,” Olsen reportedly said. Olsen, who played only one full season on the PGA Tour in 2004, would not reveal who told him about the alleged suspension.
Ty Votaw, the executive vice president of the PGA Tour, denied Olsen’s claim.
“There is no truth whatsoever to these claims,” Votaw told ESPN. “We categorically deny these allegations.”
The Tour almost never comments on disciplinary matters.
Woods was last seen on the course early in February when he withdrew during the first round of the Farmers Insurance Open. On Feb. 11, he said he needed to take a break to deal with the issues in his game.
Olsen, 48, was on a Lansing, Mich., radio station Friday when he talked about Woods and said, “I heard he’s on a month’s suspension … it’s kind of a strong witness. It’s a credible person who is telling me this.”
Olsen also accused Woods of using illegal equipment.
Austin to host Match Play Championship
The elite WGC-Match Play Championship will be staged in Austin, Texas, from 2016 to 2019 as part of a four-year deal with its new title sponsor, the International Federation of PGA Tours announced on Tuesday.
Texas-based PC maker Dell, which has major sports sponsorship experience with Formula 1 and America’s Cup, will take over as the event’s title sponsor next year when the event will be renamed the WGC-Dell Match Play.
“We’re confident that Dell will find the World Golf Championships to be an extremely effective and valuable global marketing and business-to-business platform,” PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem said in a statement.
An announcement on the host course for 2016 in the Greater Austin Area will be made “in the near future,” the International Federation of PGA Tours and Dell said in a joint statement.
Austin, the 11th-most populous city in the United States, last hosted a sanctioned PGA Tour event from 2003-2009 on the over-50s Champions Tour.
The Match Play Championship, the first of the season’s elite four World Golf Championships (WGC) events, will this year be held as the WGC-Cadillac Match Play at TPC Harding Park in San Francisco from Apr. 29-May 3.
Australian Jason Day will defend the title he won in 2014 with a one-up victory over Frenchman Victor Dubuisson after 23 holes in the final.
Limited to the top 64 players in the world, the Match Play Championship was previously played in Marana, Arizona from 2007 to 2014.