Should Tiger Woods skip the Masters?

Tiger Woods had the golf world on the edge of its collective seat on Friday as he waited until almost the last possible moment to announce he would skip this week’s Arnold Palmer Invitational. But he still remained hopeful of starting at Augusta on April 9.

With the Masters on tap in little more than three weeks, it’s difficult to imagine that Woods will deem his game up to snuff by then. In the meantime, despite — and in many ways, because of — Tiger’s tortuous and really remarkable to-play-or-not-to-play indecision remains the underlying question in the game.

For sure, Jordan Spieth overcoming Patrick Reed and Sean O’Hair in the thrilling three-way playoff for the Valspar Championship on Sunday was gripping, must-see TV — with weekend ratings increases north of 30 percent for Golf Channel and NBC to prove it. The future of the game appeared to be in fine fettle with Spieth and Reed (and 32-year-old 2005 PGA Tour Rookie of the Year Sean O’Hair somehow cast as the third wheel) going at each other, with a suddenly fallible Rory McIlroy waiting in the wings.

No doubt, a McIlroy-Reed, Reed-Spieth or Rory-Jordan shootout on Sunday at Augusta would treat fans to some bomb-and-gouge entertainment with delicate, short-game magic on display as well. With Dustin Johnson rebounding from a six-month furlough to his ninth PGA Tour win two weeks ago at Doral, and two-time Masters champ Bubba Watson aiming to go back-to-back in Georgia, there is virtually no end of potential storylines heading into the men’s first major of the year.

And yet it’s still all about Tiger — and will be for the foreseeable future, especially if he has no idea which way the Nike’s RZN Black ball will bounce in the coming days, weeks, months, let alone off the wedge. With questions swirling about his game and psyche, in addition to perennial concerns about his physical fitness, an absent Woods would likely cast an even more foreboding shadow over the proceedings off of Magnolia Lane than he did last year.

“There’s probably not another player in the history of sports [who] has had as big an impact on his sport as Tiger, as far as viewership and ratings and money -- maybe Muhammad Ali in boxing,” Paul Azinger said ahead of the 2014 Masters. “I just can’t think of anybody that, when he’s not here, the void is any greater in any sport.”

If what we’ve seen thus far in 2015 — hosel rockets, breaking 80, a missed cut, a withdrawal, and two ambiguous messages from the Big Cat saying he won’t be prowling the fairways for real until he’s “tournament-ready” — it would be stunning and yet somehow expected if he were to decide to continue his quest for No. 15 in 23 days.

“It would scare me personally if I had that problem [the yips] as a player,” Arnold Palmer, the host of this week’s Tiger-less tournament, said about the career-threatening issue that purportedly afflicts Woods, according to Brian Hewitt. “Thank goodness I never did.”

Remarks emanating from Woods’ Florida bunker, where Golf Channel analyst and Tiger intimate Notah Begay III has been working out and practicing with his former Stanford teammate, would seem to indicate another Augusta no-show for the former world No. 1. Should he take a pass for the second consecutive year at the place where he won his first of four Masters in 1997, by 12 shots, it won’t be for lack of effort.

“I can attest to the fact that things are improving and he is putting in some solid work days,” Begay said on Golf Channel Friday after Woods sent his regrets to Arnie. “It’s [his game] just not at the status that he wants it.”

Hard work and desire, though, may not be enough to get Woods to Augusta.

“Sometimes it’s difficult when you want to get out there and your heart tells you that you want to be playing competitive golf because … you’ve won so many of these events,” Begay said. “But at the end of the day, if his game isn’t going to hold up from tee to green and around the greens especially with the question marks around his short game, I think it’s a good decision for him to sort of hold off until he feels like he’s 100 percent.”

Woods’ agent, Mark Steinberg, supported Begay’s view of things at Camp Tiger and stated the obvious about his client’s overall objective.

“He’s grinding. He’s really, really working,” Steinberg told Bob Harig. “Everyone knows he’s working toward the Masters, he wants to play there. But having said that, he really wanted to play in the worst way [at Bay Hill]. He wanted to play at Honda.”

Well, maybe not “in the worst way,” which is how Woods played in his few competitive forays since returning from a break after missing the cut at the PGA Championship in August. Since then, he exhibited a shockingly ragged short game at the Hero World Challenge where he tied for last, carded a career-worst 82 and missed the cut in Phoenix, and withdrew after 11 holes of the first round at Torrey Pines.

Woods announced on Feb. 11 that he would take an indefinite leave from the tour and would not return until he could “compete at the highest level.” He said at the time he expected “to be playing again very soon.”

Even if he were to proclaim himself ready, if history is any indication, Woods will not enter either of the two Texas tourneys ahead of Augusta. That would mean, if he’s good to go for the Masters, he is entering the fray in the wake of the worst start of his professional career.

Many Tiger followers will recall that Woods took the field at Augusta in 2010, post-sex scandal, with no competitive rounds on his card, and tied for fourth. Of course, though his private life was in shambles, he was five years younger and the health of his game was not an issue.

All of which leads us to now, and the Tiger Masters Watch is on. With Steinberg contending that Woods will stick to his plan of not coming back until he believes he’s prepared, it would seem unlikely — and unwise — for the 14-time major champion’s private jet to touch down anywhere near Washington Road in early April.

Whatever progress Woods has made since the world last saw him limp off the course at Torrey Pines, it would certainly be undone if the suddenly camera-shy 39-year-old turned up at the most iconic of golf courses in the most watched of all golf tournaments and repeated the chunks and skulls that drove him away last month.

And yet … Father Time.

“I know that I don’t have 20 years in my prime,” Woods said a year ago, before missing, on a course where he had won eight times, his first-ever 54-hole cut. “I don’t see being 58 and being in my prime. Most guys don’t jump from the foul line at age 58, so it’s a little different but the outlook is still the same.”

Woods, who has been stuck on 14 major wins since 2008, went on to card two more MCs and two WDs in just seven more starts in 2014. Flash forward some 14 months and the outlook is far different than it was when Woods was coming off a five-win, Player of the Year season.

With fewer and fewer chances to get back in the chase for Jack Nicklaus’ record, no doubt the tick-tocking reverberates especially noisily in Tiger’s ear.

It would be folly to expect even a rested and ready Woods to brandish his clubs the way he did back in the day. But even the most ardent of Eldrick boosters can only hope he turns off the clock until he is certain he has regained a semblance of the form that made him the most dominant golfer of his, or any, day.

Until that time comes — if it does — it’s back to the launch monitor to keep tabs on Tiger’s ongoing Hamlet drama.

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