One of TV's most popular TV game shows growing up in the 60's was "To tell the Truth" where panelists had to guess which of the three competitors was the real person. After questioning the host would say "would the real (whomever) please stand up"
While the show first aired on CBS in 1956 the tenant of the contest was the actual real person of the three had to answer questions truthfully while the other two could say what they wanted.
After a week of wild speculation, (which began with a bizzillion tweets about Tiger's private plane heading for Augusta) I'm here to tell you "the real Tiger Woods is about to stand up" on Friday.
And furthermore the answer to the panelist who asked him, "will you be playing this year?" will be " No "
Speculation was fuelled by some because every player who's qualified is listed on the participants page of masters.com and stays on it until they tell the committee they are not playing. They have until Friday to do so.
In 2015 he waited until Friday to say he was, but in 2016, 2017 he said he wasn't.
Unless Tiger has had a visit from the Vulcan grip of Dr Spock in the last month he will not be fit enough to walk Augusta and play like a champion for 5 days, he nearly had his foot amputated !
Furthermore for goodness sake, he hasn't played with real bullets for well over a year, no matter how much he practices at home, no matter what clips he issues showing him hit a 7 iron, he is not going to return to shoot 78 76 and head home to watch on TV. He's had no reps, no rounds, no build up at other tournaments, his tournament game more likely than not sucks right now.
No amount of rhetoric about playing on a broken leg, a torn acl, a superman who can play withstanding excruciating pain is forgetting that he won't play unless he can win, he told us all that in his last interview at Riviera.
Tiger is at Augusta this week meeting privately with friends and not so publicly, trying to test himself on Augusta National, so he can rule out any chance of playing, and put the inevitable media frenzy to bed, and he will do that on Friday.
Furthermore, and here's my real angst. If Tiger were fool enough, which he isn't, to say I'm playing, the Masters stops being the great golf tournament that Tiger has played such a memorable role in, and will just become the Tiger Woods show, to the exclusion of all the great story lines, great players who ARE the stars of this generation, and deserve all of our attention, all of our admiration, all of our respect.
Tiger cannot with all due respect, due to his well documented circumstances, play at their level right now, and possible ever again.
To throw his hat into the ring for this Masters would be nothing more than self serving and he is not that. It's time the media made that clear, ended this silly speculation, and look forward to his recovery that may have him in the field at St Andrews for the Open in mid July.
Bryan Angus
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