The field for the year’s first World Golf Championship will not include Tiger Woods, although that’s not a huge surprise given his silence since undergoing his fifth back surgery.

Woods had narrowly qualified for next week’s WGC-Workday Championship by remaining inside the top 50 in the world ranking (he’s 48^th) but elected not to play the event which would be about a three-hour drive from his south Florida home.

Woods – who is a seven-time winner of the World Golf Championship which has been played in Miami, Mexico City and now Bradenton, Fla. – skipped the Farmers Insurance Open and this week’s Genesis Invitational, which benefits his foundation, and hasn’t played an official PGA Tour event since the Masters in November.

This year’s WGC-Workday Championship will mark the first time the event will be played without either Woods or Phil Mickelson, who didn’t qualify for the event, in the field since the world events were created in 1999.