Tiger declines invite to join NBC's broadcast team for U.S. Open

Tiger Woods declined an invitation to join the NBC broadcast team for the upcoming U.S. Open at Torrey Pines, which is where the 15-time major winner famously beat Rocco Mediate in a playoff in 2008 while competing on a broken leg.

The NBC team figured Woods would be a prominent talking point at next week's event and reached out to gauge Tiger's interest.

“We were all thinking how good that would be, who better, if he couldn’t be there to play it, to voice it and have him a part of the show, but we were rebuffed,” broadcaster Dan Hicks said on a conference call, according to Golf.com's Josh Berhow.

“He didn’t want to do it, and I totally understand his situation," he continued. "There is a lot going on in his world right now and there’s also a part of Tiger that doesn’t want to become this, I don’t want to, for lack of a better word, a sideshow at an event where we should be concentrating on what’s happening.”

Since his late-February car crash, Woods has only been seen in an Instagram post of him in his backyard on crutches. He's currently rehabbing from his multiple leg fractures suffered during the single-vehicle accident.

The U.S. Open begins June 17.