Tiger Woods will play the 2015 Masters

Tiger Woods will play the 2015 Masters, a step that will afford the reclusive former ace an opportunity to win his 15th major championship, and the first in almost seven years. Woods announced his return to the game, as he always does, on his own website Friday afternoon.

Unlike his recent statements trying to explain the state of his game, this one was brief.

“I’m playing in the Masters,” Tiger said Friday afternoon. “It’s obviously very important to me, and I want to be there.

“I’ve worked a lot on my game and I’m looking forward to competing. I’m excited to get to Augusta and I appreciate everyone’s support.”

Woods’ decision to tee it up at Augusta, after a back injury forced him to miss the Masters for the first time in his career last year, was not much of a surprise after Tiger practiced at Augusta a week ahead of the tournament and returned three days later on another recon mission. Despite how important each grand slam event is to the 39-year-old Woods, his appearance at Augusta was not a foregone conclusion given the state of his game and lengthy layoff -- including skipping the Arnold Palmer Invitational for the second straight season -- leading up to the Masters.

How Woods will fare come April 9, after the abysmal and abbreviated start to his 2015 campaign is anybody’s guess. He recorded just 47 awful holes this year in one-plus PGA Tour events after returning from a protracted, injury-related hiatus and prior to another game break.

In announcing in February that he would step away from the tour for an indefinite period, Woods said his furlough had nothing to do with his surgically repaired back and everything to do with how he “embarrassed” himself with his shaggy shot-making.

Despite what the holder of 18 major championships says each time someone asks him about his closest challenger’s chances of shattering his all-time record, opportunities are shrinking for Woods to put a dent in Jack Nicklaus’ four-major lead. Indeed, what seemed a fait accompli as the former world No. 1 won four straight grand slam events and added “Tiger Slam” to the golf lexicon, now appears a virtual impossibility.

Opting to give it a go at the Masters will ramp up wild speculation about whether Woods can finally cadge that elusive 15th major and, secondarily, whether the second-winningest tour player of all-time (79 Ws to Sam Snead’s 82) can resume his chase of Snead’s mark.

Two words effectively recap Woods’ career over the past 13-plus months, since he returned from a five-win, 2013 Player of the Year season: brief and ugly.

A back injury hindered him throughout his abbreviated 2014 campaign, which began with his first-ever 54-hole missed cut -- at Torrey Pines, where he had won eight times -- and ended with a garden-variety MC at the PGA Championship. In between, Woods withdrew from the Honda Classic after 67 holes, ended his pain-wracked WGC-Cadillac Championship stint with his worst Doral score (78) in the final round in March, and took a break until June when he came back and promptly missed the cut at the Quicken Loans National.

A nolo contendere at the British Open led to a 62-hole WD at Firestone, and then the train wreck that was his short stay at the PGA. A long offseason ensued after he mercifully took himself out of the running for a Ryder Cup spot, with the usual hoopla accompanying his homecoming to the Hero World Challenge at his old stomping grounds at Isleworth.

The cheers soon turned to gasps, head-shaking, and Oscar-worthy GIFs documenting how the erstwhile short-game wizard hurled, chunked and skulled his way into a share of last place in the unofficial, limited-field event.

Most observers lauded Woods for his revamped “new but old” swing (under the tutelage of new consultant Chris Como after splitting with Sean Foley in August) and assumed the nine chili dips at Isleworth were aberrations from a rusty golfer.

Then came the MC at the Phoenix Open after a career-worst 82, followed by Woods’ claims that his physical health was “fine” and that he “felt great.” His psyche, maybe not so much.

“Mentally, I’m a little bit tired from the grind of trying to piece together a round when I was five-over par, and I fought back to give myself a decent look going into the weekend,” said Woods, opening the door for armchair shrinks to amble through and make themselves comfortable. “I’m proud of that, because that takes a lot of mental energy to be able to fight back like that.”

It was on to Torrey, where the track he used to own took possession of Woods, before he even made his way to the first tee in competition.

It was all over but the shoe change, trunk slamming, and quick getaway from the players’ parking lot when Tiger began grimacing and clutching at his back early on. With just 11 holes in the books after starting on the 10th, Woods shook hands with his playing partners on the third green, hitched a buggy ride to his courtesy car, and was gone.

Days later came the ambiguous “I’m on a break” statement, followed by the usual Tiger drama (his agent said he couldn’t wait to come back, a journeyman pro claimed and then recanted charges that Woods was suspended after a failed drug test -- you know, the usual Big Cat Big Top sideshow).

The only certainty surrounding the deepening mystery that is golf’s marquee attraction is that there will be an Eldrick sighting at Augusta National the second week of April. Whether his short game is still “catastrophically bad,” as Brandel Chamblee noted just a week before the 2015 tournament, remains to be seen. We do know Augusta will be about just the toughest place to test that out.

Last year, the concern was that Woods’ latest health problem -- on top of an already injury-plagued career, a personal scandal and rehab, yet another new swing, a dizzying descent out of the top 50 in the world, and ongoing struggles to be relevant in the majors he did play -- would finally derail his race to No. 19.

This time around, despite his failure to activate his glutes during that foreshortened tour of Torrey, Woods will renew his quest for golf immortality on the course, instead of in the MASH unit or on the side of a milk carton.