Tiger! Will He Or Won’t He Play? Does It Matter?

Tiger has cancelled his Tuesday news conference set for 9:30 a.m. at Valhalla. Bingo boards are being recycled into paper airplanes as we speak.

Agent Mark Steinberg has texted ESPN.com's Bob Harig and says a decision on whether Tiger will play the PGA Championship may not come Tuesday, either.

"Way too early. He has to rest and get treatment and then assess later," he wrote. "Pointless to make that decision now without proper time to give him best chance. Nothing further today, maybe [not] even tomorrow."

Jim McCabe reviews the situation says that regardless of whether Tiger plays, the constantly injured state hasn't been pretty numerically.

At 38, Woods makes headlines not with his golf, but with his litany of injuries. If he is unable to tee it up at Valhalla this week, it will be the seventh major championship missed to injury in 26 opportunities since he last won a major, the 2008 U.S. Open. That’s nearly 27 percent, which used to represent his winning clip.

Now, 27 percent is more closely identified with the percentage of times he tees it up in PGA Tour competition.

My view is that Tiger would be wrong to play on a number of levels. Health, the obvious concern first and foremost. What does he have to prove that supersedes resting up and getting ready for the future?

Next up, credibility. If he had a spasm as severe as the one Sunday, then he will not be physically ready to play Valhalla. There is also a credibility issue with peers and fans: if he plays this week, many will conclude that he embellished the pain to get off the golf course if he is able to miraculously turn things around and show up at Valhalla.

And finally, there is simply no reason to play. He can't win the PGA. He can't make the FedExCup. And Tom Watson doesn't want him on the Ryder Cup team playing like this.

So for all of those reasons and many inexplicable others only Sigmund Freud could fully extrapolate, I expect him to play.