It’s not hard to imagine Tiger Woods bending at the knees and cautiously lowering his body to put a tee into the moist grass of Augusta National’s first hole and making some quip about how accomplishing that feat was a big win.
Like Jack Nicklaus, the idol whose records he chased but never fully realized, Woods’s body is failing him. It has been for more than a decade and it’s fair to ask now whether Tiger is closer to joining Nicklaus as an honorary starter at the Masters than he is to competing for a sixth green jacket.
Is Woods best fit for a ceremonial role? “Not in his mind,” Nicklaus said when I asked him at a press conference following the annual opening tee shots. But even the most ardent Woods supporters know the truth. Woods will not win another green jacket. He won’t catch Nicklaus’s record of 18 majors. He won’t break the tie with Sam Snead for the most wins in PGA Tour history. Those days are over.
The future looks more like what we saw this morning at Augusta, where Nicklaus, Gary Player and Tom Watson hit the first tee shots as honorary starters to officially kick off the 2025 Masters.
The air was brisk, dew stuck to the ground and the trio of golf greats were greeted with reverent ovations throughout their walk from the white clubhouse to the first tee. Nicklaus kept an arm on his wife Barbara’s shoulder for support, tottering his way through the crowd, and proclaiming “I won” after a drawn-out crouch to set up his tee and ball in the grass.
“That’s it for another year,” Nicklaus said after hitting his drive.
It’s impossible to predict whether Woods will be here for the 2026 Masters. Certainly, he won’t be an honorary starter yet, but that time seems poignantly closer than he would likely admit.
Last month Woods had surgery for a torn Achilles. No one knows when he'll return. If it's the 2026 Masters, it will have been over a year-and-a-half since his last professional tournament when he missed the cut at the 2024 British Open at St. Andrews. That was his third straight missed cut. He hasn’t been competitive in a tournament in half a decade.
Woods played exhibition golf as part of the TGL indoor simulator league earlier this year. Even then, where he didn’t have to walk a course or swing more than a few dozen times, his body looked rickety. Then the Achilles news dropped. Everything moving forward will be an exhibition.
Player hinted that Ben Hogan declined an invite to become an honorary starter at Augusta, saying, “Ben Hogan wouldn’t play. He wouldn’t tee off in this par-3. That was his choice. That was his pride in his particular case. So everybody is different.”
Whether Woods would do the same is speculation. Even if he doesn’t play another Masters in his life, that call from the chairman of Augusta National inviting him to become an honorary starter won’t come for a long time. Palmer was 77 years old when he took his first honorary swing in 2007. Nicklaus was 70 when he joined him three years later.
Woods will turn 50 in December. His biggest rival, Phil Mickelson, is 54 and still playing the Masters, finishing T2 two years ago. Who would have guessed Phil would outlast Tiger when Woods first burst on the scene as the most physically fit player golf had ever seen?
In the future, Tiger and Phil could take the first tee together as honorary starters, sharing a tee box and trading barbs about helping each other get a tee in the ground. The temperature will be brisk and their bodies will be creaky and their swings will be short.
“Just don’t kill anybody,” Nicklaus said about his swing thought before this year’s honorary tee shot.
It’s not hard to imagine Tiger making a similar joke in the near future.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as The Only Role Left for Tiger Woods at the Masters Is Honorary Starter .
