Tiger Woods missed the Masters, but a pal believes he may return to golf soon

Woods pulled out of the 81st Masters, but when will we see him again?

AUGUSTA, Ga. -- Tiger Woods had to pull out of the 2017 Masters because of a back that would not allow him to compete at the highest level. This happened last Friday just a handful of days before the 81st edition of this tournament.

That news was (or should have been) devastating for Woods fans. Tiger not needing surgery but not playing the Masters? Just how bad is his back doing? Part of it certainly has to do with the fact that his back has not allowed him to get practice work in. He does not want to go embarrass himself. But it’s disconcerting that Woods is not playing Augusta National this year.

To compound this, Woods’ old pal said he saw him at the Champions Dinner on Tuesday night and that Woods was not doing great. 

“He’s day-to-day,” Mark O’Meara told Golf Channel. “’Some days I have good days; some days I have bad days.’ [The pain] is pretty much in the same area in his lower back that he’s had the surgeries on. But he’s such a competitor that he can’t come out and play half of what he did. The timetable for his return, I didn’t ask him, but you can tell that it’s kind of you just have to wait and see.”

But over the weekend, another Woods pal, Notah Begay, said that Woods could return in a month or so from his latest injury.

“[The Masters] probably wouldn’t have been the best place for Tiger to start the year out after this most recent setback, and I think we should probably look, maybe something just after The Players Championship,” Begay said.

“Oh, [the U.S. Open] a definite possibility,” he noted. “That’s probably the event that’s circled on his calendar, but he’s got to at least get one or two starts in before that to see where his body, where his game’s at and if he can hit the shots he wants to hit.”

So who knows. There could be stops and starts for years at this point. Woods’ back is clearly not completely healthy and likely never will be again. But according to Begay we could see him again fairly soon. Although like O’Meara pointed out, the pain being in the same slot in his back is not a great sign.