Orlando, Florida — Rory McIlroy Withdrawal from the third round of the Arnold Palmer Invitational on Saturday when he felt a muscle spasm in his back that would not go away.
The cramps were not thought to be severe enough to keep him out of next week’s Players Championship, where McIlroy is the defending champion. He was going to his home in South Florida.
“This morning while warming up in the gym, I felt a slight twinge in my back. As I started hitting balls on the range before the round, it got worse and I started to spasm a muscle in my lower back,” McIlroy said in a statement to the PGA Tour.
He said, “Unfortunately, I am not able to continue and will have to step down.” “I was excited to compete this weekend. I look forward to a great finish at the Arnold Palmer Invitational and look forward to coming back next year.”
It was his first significant problem with his back since the Tour Championship in 2023, which he played through discomfort and finished fourth at the FedEx Cup Final. They played twice more in Ireland and England before going 4–1 to lead Europe to another Ryder Cup victory.
McIlroy is headed for a big stint in golf, culminating with the first major of the year, the Masters, which begins on April 9 and features McIlroy as the defending champion. By winning last year, he became the sixth player to win a career Grand Slam.
McIlroy withdrew about 30 minutes before his tee time on Saturday. He was warming up on the range when he realized that the warm weather at Bay Hill was not making the cramps go away.
This was only the third time that McIlroy was forced to withdraw from a tournament. He left the Nedbank Golf Challenge in 2009 due to a flu virus and food poisoning, and in 2013 he withdrew from the Honda Classic midway through the second round, citing pain in his first wisdom tooth and apologizing a week later, saying his head was not in the right place.
Bay Hill was her fifth tournament of the year – two in Dubai, and two signature events in Pebble Beach and Riviera. McIlroy had played Augusta National for the first time since winning the Masters just a week earlier. Earlier this week, he teamed up with his father to win the Seminole Pro-Member in South Florida.
