Woods' rivals disappointed

Padraig Harrington and Paul Casey have expressed their disappointment at Tiger Woods' absence from the field for this week's Chevron World Challenge.

The world number one will miss the tournament which he hosts due to the injuries he sustained in last weekend's car crash outside his home in Florida.

He will be replaced by Northern Ireland's Graeme McDowell in the 18-man field at Thousand Oaks in California, but Harrington would rather be testing himself against the 14-time major champion.

The Dubliner told Sky Sports News: "Obviously, we all want to compete against Tiger and beat Tiger at his very best, so it would be a nice opportunity at this time of year to go head-to-head with him, but it's not to be.

"There's plenty of other good players here this week, and the guy who wins here on Sunday afternoon will have played the best golf and probably deserved to win."

Casey returns to action after suffering a recurrence of a rib injury in the WGC-HSBC Champions tournament in Shanghai three weeks ago.

After reaching four in the world rankings, Casey's season hit the buffers after he suffered the injury in August and missed three months of the season.

And while he is sad not to be taking on the world number one, he is more concerned with getting his own game back on track.

"It's very disappointing," said the Englishman. "But there are 17 other guys I've got to play against this week and I'm worried about myself.

"I've got to get my golf game back in shape and this is a wonderful place to do it. It's a golf course I love and it's great to be in California at this time of year."

Colombian star Camilo Villegas added: "We'll definitely miss him. It's his tournament. They put on a great show here and Tiger's Tiger but that's the way it goes."