Ryder Cup players Phillip Price and Thomas Bjorn will miss this week's World Cup of Golf team competition at Kiawah Island, the players' management company confirmed today.
Price, who would have represented Wales with Bradley Dredge, is suffering from a cold while Bjorn, set to partner Soren Kjeldsen for Denmark, is sidelined with a neck injury.
"Phillip is feeling pretty rough," a spokesperson for International Management Group told Reuters.
"His cold came on over the weekend and he felt terrible yesterday during his singles match at the Seve Trophy (in Spain).
"And Thomas, who had to pull out of his (Seve Trophy) singles match at El Saler, can't play at Kiawah Island because of an ongoing neck injury."
Welshman Price will be replaced at the World Cup by 1991 U.S. Masters champion Ian Woosnam while last year's Volvo PGA champion Anders Hansen will come in for Bjorn, the spokesperson added.
The off-colour Price lost to Spaniard Sergio Garcia 4 and 3 in their singles clash yesterday at the biennial Seve Trophy competition, although his Britain and Ireland team went on to retain the cup against Continental Europe 15-13.
Bjorn was forced to withdraw before the start of his scheduled match against Englishman Paul Casey.
"It is a recurring injury I have now and again and it just popped up at the wrong time," said the 32-year-old Dane. "When I went down to hit some balls on the range, it just got worse and worse and it got to the stage where there was nothing I could do."
The World Cup, being staged this week for the 49th time, will be played on the Ocean Course at Kiawah Island in the United States.
The 24-team event, which starts on Thursday, is the fourth and final World Golf Championships (WGC) event of the year.
WGC events are sanctioned and organised by the International Federation of PGA Tours, which includes the Asian PGA Tour, the European Tour, the Japan Golf Tour, the PGA Tour in the United States, PGA Tour of Australasia and the Southern Africa Tour.
Defending World Cup champions are Japan's Shigeki Maruyama and Toshi Izawa, who won last year's title by two strokes from the U.S. at the Vista Vallarta course in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.