31 March 2024 , 06:00
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Tiger Woods spent Saturday playing a practice round at Augusta less than two weeks before the Masters starts.
Woods, 48, has not been out on the course competitively since withdrawing after six holes of the second round during the Genesis Invitational in mid-February with the flu. But earlier this month, the 15-time major champion returned to golf in the Seminole Pro-Member alongside friend and business partner Rory McIlroy.
Unlike the world number two, Woods did not play in the Arnold Palmer Invitational or The Players Championship. More recently, he played a round with Yasir Al-Rummayan, the governor of Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, in The Bahamas before the latest meetings about a merger between LIV Golf and the PGA Tour.
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Now, an Augusta scouting mission has followed. Woods' Gulfstream G550 jet flew north into Augusta, per flight trackers.
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Sports Illustrated later reported that he played with club chairman Fred Ridley and Justin Thomas. Woods is on the entry list for his 26th appearance at the tournament in what would be his second event of the year.
By making the cut, the five-time Masters winner would break a tie with Gary Player and Fred Couples for the most consecutive made cuts in competition history. He has done so 24 straight times, starting in 1997 when he pulled on the Green Jacket for the first time. Woods has only missed the cut once, in 1996, after finishing in a tie for 41st the previous year before even turning professional.
Woods is preparing to play at the Masters next month (Photo by Ronald Martinez/Getty Images)Almost three decades later, he is due to return this year. After previously sharing plans to play an event every month this year, Woods appears eager to make up for falling short of those intentions in March, aside from in Seminole.
"Once a month seems reasonable," Woods stated last year. "It gives me a couple of weeks to recover and a week to tune up. Maybe I can get into the rhythm."
Regaining that repetition is likely behind the pre-tournament visit to a course he knows as well as any. Woods is unlikely to turn down any opportunity for a round at Augusta.
It is approaching a year since he acknowledged before the previous Masters that he did not know how many more he had in him. Days later, Woods withdrew midway through the tournament due to injury before undergoing fusion surgery on his arthritic right ankle the following month.
But earlier this year, he proclaimed himself "pain-free going into the Genesis." Woods explained: "My ankle doesn't hurt any more - the bones aren't rubbing any more.
"But then again it's different - other parts of my body have to take the brunt of it, just like my back is fused, and so other parts of my body have taken the brunt of that." Back spasms affected him at Riviera during his Tour return before later succumbing to illness.