POTOMAC, Md. — Paul Casey withdrew from the Wells Fargo Championship with a back injury on Thursday morning and was replaced in the field by Jason Dufner.
If Paul Casey withdrawing from a PGA Tour event is sounding awfully familiar, it’s because this has become a bit of a pattern recently. After coming in third at the Players Championship during a long, rainy week and Monday finish at TPC Sawgrass, Casey was in the field at the Valspar Championship, an event he’d won twice. But he that Tuesday he withdrew from the event, with no specific reason cited.
Casey was entered into the following week’s WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play, only to forfeit each of his three group-play matches, the first after two holes and the other two before they even began. Having started the event, he still officially was listed as finishing T-60 and collected a $41,000 paycheck.
Two weeks later, Casey withdrew again from another event, this time the Masters on Thursday morning prior to his opening round. (Casey practiced that week at Augusta National and even played in the Par-3 Contest.)
The Englishman did not provide a statement that might clarify all the late withdrawals. He was on the grounds at TPC Potomac on Tuesday but withdrew from the Wednesday pro-am.
Casey, 44, is ranked No. 26 in the world. His status for the PGA Championship, for which he has qualified and which begins May 19 at Southern Hills in Tulsa, Okla., is uncertain.