Will he or won't he?

Tiger Woods' announcement on whether he will play The Open at Royal St George's is surely imminent

Tiger Woods

I won't hide the fact that I scoured the website first thing this morning for the latest news on whether Tiger Woods will be teeing it up at Royal St George's next week. In other words, I checked Twitter.

All I got was Ian Poulter's advice that the former world number one and 14-time Major winner should skip The Open to focus on his recovery from injury that some people regard as seriously career threatening.

Poulter, of course, is never shy in voicing his opinion, but you can't argue that this may be sound advice for the man who has been missing from competitive action since withdrawing from The Players in May.

Woods used to prepare meticulously for the Majors and he's admitted his concern recently at being out of his comfort zone in his attempts to head 'cold' into the test at Royal St George's.

At 27/1 in the betting, even the bookies are now accepting he's a shadow of his former self and nowhere near ready to compete for a Major. For a long time even after his self imposed break from the game, the bookies were reluctant to shift on a general Major price that hovered around the 3/1 mark.

It seems the only betting interest in Woods at the moment is whether he'll play at Royal St George's, let alone win. On that note I'm off to scour the betting for that and I'm inclined to back a no show... surely he won't play if he's not ready to win?

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