Tiger apparently has picked the theme for his Champions Dinner before this year’s Masters’ tournament: Mexican

The BBC is reporting that—because of his father’s apparently deteriorating condition—Tiger Woods could miss this year’s Masters:

Tiger Woods could miss next month’s Masters in order to spend time with his father, who is suffering with cancer.

The defending champion visited Earl Woods in California on Wednesday, rather than practising for the Players Championship at Sawgrass.

Woods said: “There’s a chance I might not play for a while. It all depends on how my father is doing.”

Asked if he could miss the Masters, he added: “You never know. When your parents aren’t doing well, it’s tough.”

In think that people are over-reacting to his missed practice on Wednesday before the Player’s Championship. Missing a practice round doesn’t even begin to equate to missing the Masters.

What Tiger is saying is what any of us would say—that if a loved one was not doing well, we would move heaven and earth to be by their side.

But I’ve not heard him say that his dad was at that point. In fact, he seemed to say that his spirits had picked up.

And if Tiger misses the Masters to be with his dad, he just becomes even more of a Champion in my eyes.

ESPN is reporting that Tiger Woods has skipped both his Wednesday practice round and his scheduled news conference.

Speculation is rampant that he won’t be playing in this weekend’s Player’s Championship.

PGA Officials say that he is “not on site.”

UPDATE:

AP Golf Writer Doug Ferguson reports that Tiger missed his practice round to visit his father in California. He expects to make his tee time on Thursday.

Earl Woods has suffered for several years from cancer, and apparently was not strong enough to attend the grand opening Feb. 10 of the Tiger Woods Learning Center in Anaheim, Calif. 

With Tiger sitting in 25th place after the second day of the Arnold Palmer Bay Hill Invitational—a tournament he is used to winning—an article by Sports Illustrated’s Chris Lewis becomes even more interesting.

Chris says that although Tiger has shown signs of returning to his old dominance, victories at San Diego and Doral don’t really mean a whole lot:

If Woods had strung together a bunch of such victories—let’s say, worked in another Match Play triumph or posted his first-ever win at Riviera instead of being felled by the flu—then we’d have a different kind of season on our hands. We’d already know we were in a Rampant Tiger kind of year. Indeed, a number of scribes are already hard-selling that theme. But it will take one more pre-Masters Tiger victory, at this week’s Bay Hill Invitational or next week’s Players Championship, to convince me.

Chris has some other players in mind if Tiger can’t step up to the plate: the young trio of J.B. Holmes, Bubba Watson and Camillo Villegas, for example; or David Toms, Vijay Singh, Ernie Els, or Phil Mickelson. He also cites a “conceptual David Duvall,” a player (not named DD), who goes on a memorable hot streak—Geoff Ogilvy, for example.

I personally think that Tiger wins this year’s Master’s, but that others will take the other majors. Remember that six of Tiger’s ten majors are on just two courses—Augusta and St. Andrews—and the British isn’t at St. Andrews. In Woods’ previous major at Winged Foot—the 1997 PGA, he finished well back of Davis Love (Tiger won the Masters that year).

Australia’s Advertiser has an article on Tiger Woods’ Scotty Cameron Putter—the most famous flatstick since BobbyJones’ “Calamity Jane.”