KAPALUA – Geoff Ogilvy’s bid for a third US PGA Tournament of Champions title in a row suffered a major setback when he suffered a cut in his right index finger that took 12 stitches to fix. The 33-year-old Australian suffered the injury on Tuesday when walking in shallow water at a beach in Maui, according to the US PGA Tour website, and did not play in a Wednesday pro-am event on the eve of the US PGA’s season opener.
Ogilvy is trying to match another Aussie, Stuart Appleby, as the only men to win the Tournament of Champions three years in a row. Ogilvy, the 2006 US Open champion, is set to tee off in the final group along with Jim Furyk, last year’s PGA playoff champion, in a field of 34 players who won titles in 2010. Absent from the lineup are Tiger Woods, who did not win an event last year, plus world number one Lee Westwood of England and three 2010 major winners, including Phil Mickelson, Louis Oosthuizen of SA and Martin Kaymer of Germany. Ogilvy still plans to play in the event, although the cut runs along one of the finger joints, making it trickier for him to handle clubs.
