Tiger Woods injury concerns raised ahead of Masters

It will take a monumental effort for Tiger Woods to break a new Masters record this year at Augusta National.

Woods is one of only three players with four or more Masters wins alongside Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer. The first of his five Green Jackets came with a 12-shot victory in 1997, which still stands as the tournament’s biggest winning margin.

This year, with expectations tempered for obvious reasons, the 48-year-old has the chance to make more history. Before his painful withdrawal at last year’s renewal, he tied Gary Player and Fred Couples for most consecutive cuts made with 23.

But while Woods will never enter a tournament he doesn’t think he can win, the 15-time major winner’s attempts to stand alone in the Augusta annals for longevity with cuts made is under threat.

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Woods has withdrawn from his only event this year, the Genesis Invitational, falling well short of his ambitious plan to play once a month this season.

There is no indication that he is about to miss out on the first major of the year after various reports claimed he made a scouting trip to Augusta last Sunday for a round with Justin Thomas and chairman Fred Ridley.

However, Notah Begay III, Woods’ friend and former Stanford college teammate, has expressed concern about how his body will hold up over four tournament rounds next week.

“He’s trying to formulate a strategy and approach that he can work within given the constraints that he’s presented with. And he’s got some constraints,” Begay said, as per USA Today. “He’s got zero mobility in that left ankle and really has low-back challenges now, which he knew he was going to have.

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Woods has long been besieged by multiple knee and back injuries and has played only five times since narrowly avoiding having his lower right leg amputated in a February 2021 car crash.

“For the past couple months, he’s been trying to find a way to recover,” Begay explained. “He can play the golf. We always knew the question was going to be ‘Can he walk the 72 (holes)?’ That’s still up in the air.

“But can he recover, from one round to the next? That’s the biggest question that I really don’t know and he’s not going to know either until he gets out there and figures out whether the way he’s prepared for this year’s Masters is going to work for him.”

Ben Parsons joined bunkered as a Content Producer in 2023 and is the man to come to for all of the latest news, across both the professional and amateur games. Formerly of The Mirror and Press Association, he is a member at Halifax Golf Club and is a long-suffering fan of both Manchester United and the Wales rugby team.