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Tiger Woods said he felt much better during his pro-am round Wednesday at the BMW Championship, a stark contrast to how he felt at The Northern Trust last week.

Woods was in an upbeat mood during his nine-hole round at Medinah Country Club outside of Chicago, doing as much talking as playing while working his way back from an oblique strain.

“Way, way better,” he said. “It was nice to take those days off and let it calm down and get a bunch of treatment on it. It feels so much better. I played the front nine today and played quite well. It was nice to see. Took the back nine off, chipped and putted quite a bit. It feels a lot better than it did on Friday. That’s for sure.”

Woods, 43, told reporters that his oblique injury came as a result of changes he made to his swing in response to a back ailment.

“Unfortunately, I haven’t really done a very good job of that, and when I have, I’ve hit the ball quite well,” Woods said. “I was really excited about what I was doing at Liberty (National Golf Club in Jersey City, N.J.). I made some nice changes and obviously didn’t feel very well on Thursday.”
Woods withdrew before the second round of The Northern Trust on Friday morning. He struggled a day earlier, shooting an opening-round 4-over-par 75 in the first of three events of the season-ending FedEx Cup playoffs.

Woods dropped from 28th to 38th in the FedEx Cup standings. The top 70 advanced to this week’s no-cut tournament at Medinah, but he has work to do to make the 30-man field for next week’s Tour Championship at East Lake in Atlanta.

Woods will need to finish in 11th place or better this weekend to punch his ticket to Atlanta.

The reigning Masters champion has a tee time of 11:54 a.m. ET for Thursday’s opening round, going off with Billy Horschel and C.T. Pan.

Since winning his 15th major, Woods has played in five events, missing the cut at the PGA Championship and Open Championship, tying for ninth at the Memorial, tying for 21st at the U.S. Open and withdrawing last week.

–Field Level Media (@FieldLevelMedia)