Tiger Woods has not made a stroke in a professional golf event in seven weeks, and yet fascination still reigns when he maintains the status quo.
Multiple media outlets reported that Woods declined to enter next week's Shell Houston Open. The former No. 1 player in the world has not played since Feb. 5 when he withdrew from the Farmer's Insurance Open on the 12th hole, USA TODAY Sports reported. He has played just 47 holes this year.
Is Tiger Woods making a career-threatening decision if he decides to play the Masters?
The buzz around Woods' impending absence from Houston is that it represents the final tune-up before the Masters in April. When Woods stopped playing last month, he said he would not return to the PGA Tour until he felt he could again be competitive against his peers.
Woods missed the Masters last year, opting to have surgery to repair a pinched nerve in his back. He is a four-time Masters champion and arguably is most-recognized with success at the season's first major golf tournament.
Bubba Watson can withdraw from an event in piece, unlike Tiger Woods
Hope had increased earlier this week when Woods' collegiate teammate and friend, Notah Begay, said he estimated Woods' chances of entering the Masters at 50-50, which was a huge improvement from a few weeks earlier, in which Begay insisted he would have given Woods a 1-in-10 chance of playing.
The question becomes whether Woods would feel comfortable making his return to competitive golf on the sport's biggest stage. The task would seem to be daunting to any other golfer, but the No. 1 Tiger Woods wouldn't flinch.
Woods, however, currently is No. 96 in the world and has not won since the 2013 Bridgestone Invitational.
Current No. 1 Rory McIlroy said to Yahoo! Eurosport that the time away doesn't matter when it comes to Woods at Augusta National.
"He knows his way around the Augusta," McIlroy said earlier this month. "If he feels ready to play and he does play then he knows what to do when there."
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