Tiger Woods could make a miraculous Masters return after it emerged that he is due to play a practice round at Augusta National on Tuesday.
After days of rumours and whispers that the 46-year-old will next week stun the game by teeing up it in the season’s first major, the golf world finally has something substantive to cling on.
First it emerged that he is due to play a practice round at Augusta National on Tuesday, before confirmation that his private jet landed in the Georgia city at 9.45am local time, inevitably only ramped up the anticipation over an almost surreal Woods comeback.
He has not played in an official competitive event in 18 months – ironically, the 2020 Masters, staged in that November due to coronavirus. A few months after the 2019 champion had failed to retain his Augusta title by finishing in a tie for 38th, he suffered catastrophic injuries to his right leg in a mysterious car crash in which no other vehicles were involved.
Never mind playing golf again, the surgeons were concerned about saving the limb, with Woods later revealing that “amputation was on the table”. Woods embarked on his exhaustive recovery and rehab but the narrative from Team Tiger was that he would simply be happy if he could still play with his children.
But then, in November, pictures were posted on social media of him hitting balls and in December he appeared alongside son Charlie in the PGA Tour’s parent and child championship, where the 15-time major winner looked impressive as the pair came second.
Woods, however, was keen to limit expectations, pointing out that he was allowed to use a buggy and that five days of walking 18 holes was a different matter entirely.
Just five weeks ago at the Genesis Open, the LA tournament that his charity foundation promotes, Woods poured yet more water on the notion when saying “walking on a course where there’s undulations…. I can’t do that and it’s frustrating”.
Augusta is notoriously undulating and at that stage there seemed little, if any, hope of Woods going for a record-equalling sixth green jacket, with the Open in July apparently a far wiser bet to witness his return.
Yet now all bets are off and the hype is flying as fast as his Gulfstream towards the cathedral pines. Two and two was being added up and starting to make a fanfare.
Last week, Woods was seen playing Medalist, a layout in his hometown of Jupiter, with caddie Joe LaCava and pertinently he was not buggy-assisted. And in the wake of Phil Mickelson’s withdrawal from the Masters the week before, much was made of Woods still being listed in the past champions who will be competing.
However, that is just the way Augusta works. They do not remove a past champion’s name from the entry list until he pulls out. Furthermore, unlike other competitions, there is no deadline by which Woods must commit.
There are no reserves, so his decision, however late, will not impact another player’s participation. Conceivably, he could wait until the moment before his Thursday tee-off before he scratched.
He has already signified that he will be at Augusta anyway to attend the Champions Dinner on the Tuesday before the event and he could keep his sport on tenterhooks until the balls were in the air.
A far more likely scenario, however, is Woods making his choice by the weekend. There were similar “will he or won’t he’ debates in 2016 and 2017 when he struggled with back injuries and on both occasions he withdrew on the Friday before.
But then, his jet was not caught on the radars on its way for a reconnaissance mission. Watch this airspace.