Brooks Koepka ended a forgettable PGA Tour season Wednesday when he withdrew from The Northern Trust with what he described as nagging hip and knee injuries.

Koepka was No. 97 in the FedEx Cup. He would have needed a good week at the TPC Boston, a course that tends to favor power players, to reach the top 70 and advance to the BMW Championship next week south of Chicago.

“My body’s nowhere near 100%,” Koepka said last week when he missed the cut at the Wyndham Championship, his sixth straight tournament in a late bid to revive his season.

Koepka began the year ranked No. 1 in the world and has dropped to No. 7, the product of injury and not having won in more than a year. He had a stem cell procedure during his short offseason last September. In his second start back, he injured his left knee in South Korea when he slipped on a wet slab of concrete and missed three months.

Then, he lost three months when golf shut down because of the COVID-19 pandemic. And when he did play, it was not up to his standards.

His best chance was at the World Golf Championship in Tennessee, when he hit into the water on the last hole to lose any chance of catching Justin Thomas. The following week at the PGA Championship in San Francisco, he started the final round two shots behind in a bid to become the first player in 64 years to win the same major three straight times.

Even there, he required treatment on his hip during the second round when it locked up on him. On the final day, he faded to a 74 and tied for 29th.

The tour’s season ends in three weeks. The major season is ongoing in this reconfigured golf calendar because of the pandemic. Koepka will have a month off before going for a third U.S. Open title Sept. 17-20 at Winged Foot in New York.

ROAD RACING

PEACHTREE ROAD RACE: The Peachtree Road Race in Atlanta, the largest 10-kilometer road race in the United States which has been held on the Fourth of July since its inaugural event in 1970, will be run virtually in 2020.

The event was shifted to a Thanksgiving date in hopes of staging the race during the coronavirus pandemic. It normally attracts some 60,000 runners.

But the Atlanta Track Club now says the race will not be run down the city’s famed Peachtree Street because of safety concerns. Georgia has been one of the nation’s hardest-hit states during the pandemic, recording nearly 250,000 confirmed cases and more than 4,700 deaths.

“As coronavirus has spiked in recent weeks here in Georgia, we recognize that this decision is the best and only responsible way forward,” executive director Rich Kenah said in a statement.

The track club now plans a virtual event that will allow runners to experience some of the race’s traditions and compare their times with others who take part.

CYCLING

ZANARDI IMPROVING: Italian auto racing champion-turned-Paralympic gold medalist Alex Zanardi was again released from intensive care on Wednesday after showing “significant improvements.”

Zanardi was moved back into intensive care last month, just three days after being transferred to a neurological rehabilitation center. He was seriously injured in a handbike crash in June.

“The patient has responded with significant clinical improvements,” read a statement from the Milan hospital where he is being treated. “For that reason he is currently being treated with semi intensive care at the Operational Unit of Neurorianimation.”

Zanardi underwent three delicate surgeries at a hospital in Siena to stabilize him and reconstruct his severely damaged face after crashing into an oncoming truck during a relay event near the Tuscan town of Pienza on June 19..

The 53-year-old Zanardi, who lost both of his legs in an auto racing crash nearly 20 years ago, had been on a ventilator in a medically induced coma since the crash.

TOUR DE FRANCE: Former Tour de France champions Chris Froome and Geraint Thomas were both left off the INEOS team on Wednesday for this year’s race.

INEOS announced its selections for the pandemic-affected season with its top riders allocated to each of the three major stage races.

Defending Tour champion Egan Bernal will lead the team in France from Aug. 29-Sept. 20, denying Froome a chance to tie the record of five titles. Lance Armstrong’s seven wins were retrospectively wiped out because of doping.

Froome will lead the team at the Spanish Vuelta from Oct. 20-Nov. 8. That will give the British rider, who won the Vuelta in 2011 and 2017, more time for his comeback from a horrific crash 14 months ago.

Team director Dave Brailsford said the later Vuelta start gives Froome “that little bit more time to continue his progress to the top level.”

Froome is in his last season with INEOS before he joins the Israel Start-Up Nation squad.

Thomas, the 2018 Tour champion, will ride in the Giro d’Italia from Oct. 3-25.

Richard Carapaz, the 2019 Giro champion, now rides for INEOS and will be Bernal’s main support rider in France.

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