What’s the future of Tiger Woods’ game?
“Boy, that's a loaded question,” said ESPN analyst Andy North when it was posed to him on Monday during a conference to preview the 2025 Masters, which Woods is expected to miss after his latest surgery.
“If he didn't have any children, I don't know if he'd be playing now,” North mused. “I think one of the reasons he's worked so hard after the accident was because it gave him a great opportunity to spend so much time with Charlie and play golf with his son, and watch Charlie get better.
“He made a comment to me one time is that ‘there are days Charlie comes home from school and embarrasses me into going and play nine holes late in the afternoon with him.’ I think that's something that's so special.”
But North tried to take the emotion of the decision to keep trying to come back out of the equation and predicted the next rehab for the 49-year-old Woods would be “brutally difficult for him.”
“He doesn't have to prove anything to anybody. He's done everything he needed to do. If he were to announce in the next month or two that, you know what, I'm never playing competitive golf again. I think that would be great, and no one would have an issue with that,” North said. “I think that the competitor in him – you know, you always think you can rehab. You always think you can come back. You always believe that you can do this. But I don't have any magic answers there. I would think that he's going to try to play some events after this rehab. Is it going to be a Tiger Woods that can compete? Deep in my heart, I don't think so.”
Fellow ESPN analyst Curtis Strange, who will join Scott Van Pelt in Butler Cabin, participated in the conference call, too. Strange said the game will be better if Tiger, a five-time Masters winner among his 15 major titles, can return, even if it is strictly in a ceremonial role.
“You know, these great players, superstars, always talked about they never want to be a ceremonial player or something to that effect, like it's a negative. I want to see him at Augusta for a long time in the future playing. He's not going to play the way he wants to, but I think the people would love to see him, much like they saw Jack and Arnie, especially Arnie, for a long time,” Strange said. “I think we need those people around, to be around the younger generation, to answer question … players learn by example, how to play golf courses. Just be part of the elder statesman society.
“I hope he gets back to where he can play. We don't even know if he can play ever again. It's going badly. But especially here, where he can come back and be comfortable and just be around. The people can't get enough of him. We can't get enough of him. It would be sad that he wouldn't come back here and play in the future, but what the future holds, we have no idea.”
What’s the future of Tiger’s game? To hear it from these two-time major winners and experts on the game, the future seems bleak, but then again they couched their takes by saying their guess is as good as yours.
This article originally appeared on Golfweek:
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