Woods skips Tour finale

Tiger Woods cleared space on his playing schedule when he announced Friday on his website that he won’t play next week’s Tour Championship, joining Phil Mickelson on the sideline for the PGA Tour’s $6.5-million, season-ending event.

“Playing seven out of nine weeks with an additional trip to Ireland for Ryder Cup practice was taxing both mentally and physically and I feel like I need another week away from competitive golf,” Woods said on tigerwoods.com.

The tournament is limited to the top 30 money-winners on the PGA Tour, but Woods, who finished second last year to Bart Bryant, apparently needs time off more than money. Mickelson, who also values his time off, has played the Tour Championship once in the last four years.

Woods’ next tournament will be the HSBC Champions, a European Tour event in Shanghai that begins Nov. 9. The next week he is scheduled to play the Japan Tour’s Dunlop Phoenix at Miyazaki, where he is defending champion.

He also will play the two-day PGA Grand Slam at Koloa, Hawaii, Nov. 21 and will end the year at his tournament, the Target World Challenge, Dec. 14-17 at Sherwood Country Club in Thousand Oaks.

Woods’ last official PGA Tour event was the American Express Championship near London, the week after the Ryder Cup, where he won for the sixth consecutive time on the PGA Tour.

He could have added $1.17 million to his tour-best $9.94 million with a victory in the Tour Championship at Atlanta’s East Lake Golf Club, where last place is still worth more than $100,000. But Woods already has clinched the money title for the seventh year, and six out of the last eight.

Woods also has guaranteed himself an eighth player-of-the-year award, an honor decided by the vote of the players, and will win the Byron Nelson Award for the lowest adjusted scoring average. Woods, whose average is 68.11, has won the award eight of the last nine years and owns the four best scoring averages since the Nelson Award began in 1980.

Woods, who is missing the Tour Championship for the first time, said he would be ready for next year’s FedEx Cup and playoff system that concludes with the Tour Championship.

Woods will begin the 2007 season the first week of January at the Mercedes Championships at Kapalua, Hawaii, where his winning streak will be on the line.