ABU DHABI (Reuters) - Lee Westwood's first tournament appearance of the year is being severely hampered by a niggling neck injury, the world number two said on Friday.
The 38-year-old Briton said he had pain in his right shoulder and elbow after he returned a second successive level-par 72 in the second round of the Abu Dhabi Championship.
"I've had it for about a month now but this is the first time I've played three rounds of golf in a row since the end of last year," Westwood told Sky Sports after finishing seven shots adrift of early leader Thorbjorn Olesen of Denmark.
"I felt it more yesterday than I did in Wednesday's pro-am and today I felt it quite a lot.
"The neck locked up some time over Christmas and the pain refers down into the shoulder and then into the elbow; sometimes it's like a needle's being driven in there."
Westwood said he would work on trying to ease the injury with his physiotherapist later in the day.
"I struggled to support the club on the backswing today and didn't feel I could deliver the right amount of power," he added.
"I didn't have the commitment going through the ball so I'll just get it worked on this afternoon to try and free it up a bit for tomorrow.
"Going out there and stretching it makes it better. It's about loosening it up."
Westwood, who is looking to finally end his victory drought in the major championships this year, started his round at the 10th and showed how much he was prepared to battle his way through the injury by grabbing a birdie hat-trick to the sixth.
He hit a spectacular long-range approach to six inches at the fifth and played a remarkable recovery to six feet at the next after carving a wild tee shot left into the desert.
Asked if he had thought about pulling out of the tournament, Westwood replied: "If I had hit it regularly in the long rough on my back nine I would have struggled but fortunately I didn't.
"I hit it off line a couple of times but it went in the desert and that's not quite so bad."
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