DAVID Howell admits the foot injury that forced him to withdraw from this week’s Maybank Championship Malaysia is a real cause for concern.

The Swindon golfer was hindered by the problem in his left foot during Thursday’s first round at Royal Selangor Golf Club, where he carded a two-over-par 73 to finish the day in a tie for 102nd place and nine shots off the early pace.

However, Howell was in too much discomfort to continue at the event in Kuala Lumpur and did not compete in Friday’s second round. He instead returned straight home to Dubai and is set to undergo a scan today to ascertain a full diagnosis of the problem.

Until he gets a clearer picture of the extent of the injury, it is too early to say how it may affect Howell’s schedule for the rest of the season.

“I’m back in Dubai already and I’ll go for a scan and we’ll try to work out what’s going on. We have got to get a clear prognosis of it,” Howell told the Adver.

“I had an injection last week but clearly that hasn’t done enough. The treatment clearly didn’t have the desired effect.

“It’s an area of the body that takes a lot of punishment as not only do we walk five or six miles a day, all the strain from the swing goes right down through the body into your feet, but I think it’s more than a bit of wear and tear.

“It’s not somewhere you usually hear of golfers having a lot of problems, so it’s certainly a bit of a concern. We’ve just got to get to the bottom of it.”

Howell revealed that he has been plagued by the injury for some time and underwent treatment during a rare break from the European Tour calendar last week but the problem has not eased and became too much to bear in Malaysia.

“I’ve been playing with it all year. It’s a problem that we’ve managed for quite some time,” added Howell.

“The week off last week was planned but I’d played five tournaments in a row before that and this would have been my sixth in seven weeks, so it’s been pretty full on.

“It’s an area of the body that’s always given me gyp but this calendar year it’s really flared up. It was affecting me a lot on Thursday. I was in a lot of pain and could barely swing the club.”