'You guys ready to play some golf?' asked the starter. And, yes he was. That's exactly what Tiger Woods was ready for. Some golf. He smiled, slapped his playing partner Rory McIlroy on the back. Damn right he was ready. Not to win maybe. Not yet. By the summer, though, who knows? There have been enough sightings of the old Tiger at Augusta this week not to give up on him yet. The problem with new Tiger, though, is that as desperate as he appears to march on, obstacles line his path, like tree roots. In some cases, exactly like tree roots. At the ninth, playing out of the Augusta pines, Woods found such a root at full pelt on his follow through. He dropped his club like a red-hot poker, face creased with pain. Woods claimed that a bone popped out in his right arm, right there, but he reset it. There was a degree of scepticism about the extent of that injury, but either way it continued to bother him for several holes and was rotten luck. There is, however, a well-worn method of avoiding such misfortune. Hit it on the fairway. Woods did not find a solitary preferred landing area until the 13th, when he was rewarded with an eagle. Up to that point, he spent so much time in the trees he should have been fitted with a lumberjack shirt. At the tenth he was in so deep they were thinking of sending Lassie for help. Tiger Woods looks over his second shot on the seventh hole as the Augusta crowd look on . Woods (left) speaks to playing partner Rory McIlroy as the pair wait to tee off on the first tee . Woods reacts in pain after hitting a shot out of the pine straw on the ninth hole . Still, it could have been worse. This was the Masters that Tiger was advised to miss. There were some sage voices out there, saying his old friend would turn on him, that he might be embarrassed by his favourite homeland course. His game was broken, he was broken, it was argued. This was no country for an old man with faltering short irons. Some folk wanted their happy memories preserved. These four days, however, have revealed a healthier reality. Woods didn't come back too soon, he just took his leave too late. Looking at the tournaments he played in January and February, it was plain he didn't want to be there. He should have called time out then. Had he done so, had he started his recovery earlier, who knows where his game would have been by the time he reached Augusta? Were it not for the phenomenon of Jordan Spieth's first 54 holes, he would have been in contention here starting the final day. Woods, like McIlroy, began six under par but with Spieth ten shots ahead, it was idealistic to even contemplate a charge. Woods would have needed a score approaching the course record, and Spieth a collapse – and he is not well-placed for miracles yet. Another major? Well, you wouldn't bet against that one. Woods tees off on the tenth but in the end he did not manage to challenge runaway winner Jordan Spieth . Woods plays out of the bunker by the sixteenth green at Augusta National . It could be argued that the enthusiasm for Tiger's performance this weekend shows how far he has fallen. After all, two of his four rounds – the first and last – were over par, and in the head to head on Sunday McIlroy beat him by seven shots. This was far from tournament winning golf. Then again McIlroy is the world No 1, Woods 110 places below and has barely played this year. He has reshaped his swing which continues to be a work in progress. He would not say when he will play next after this. 'It won't be for a while,' Woods confirmed. 'I like what I'm doing, so I'm going to go back and work on that.' Where this will leave him for the Majors short-term it is hard to say. He finished in the top 20 here, his best return since 2013 and many rated this as the best of several recent comebacks, one that inspired speculation about his readiness for St Andrews in July. He loves the Old Course almost as much as he loves Augusta. It brings the best out of him – and Tiger's best may still be good enough, somewhere, some day. He was blown away here – they all were – by a 21-year-old Texan who has rewritten the record books. By the time Woods and McIlroy stood on the tee at 2.30pm local time, Spieth had spoiled it for just about everyone. Only two men – Justin Rose and Phil Mickelson – were deemed capable of catching him. The world finally saw the two biggest names in golf paired in the final round of a major, only for it to be part of a distant undercard. Maybe that was why Sunday's round fell flat – for Woods, not McIlroy. McIlroy (left) celebrates after sinking a birdie putt on the eighteenth green as Woods looks on . McIlroy (right) taps Woods on the shoulder after the pair shake hands following the end of their round . The Ulsterman finished fourth and shot 66 to equal the best round of the day. Once again, inconsistency cost him dear at Augusta. He was three over par through the first 27 and with Spieth scoring so fiercely the Masters was gone from there. It is Woods's record of 18 under par that Spieth has equalled. In the difficult circumstances that preceded this tournament, Tiger most certainly brought his A game, circa 2015; how was he to know he also required a time machine to make it 1997 again and stay in the mix? What is plain, despite Sunday's disappointment, is that rumours of Tiger's demise were exaggerated. He was diagnosed from afar as having the chipping yips, and there were plenty of amateur physicians declaring his condition at best chronic and at worst incurable. Phil Mickelson, however, offered a second opinion. Speaking at Torrey Pines, where Woods quit after 12 holes to rebuild his short game, he was a rare voice predicting this cautiously positive return. 'I think Tiger's going to have the last laugh,' Mickelson said. 'I think his short game, historically, is one of the best of all time and when you haven't played it's the first thing to feel uncomfortable and the quickest thing to get back. I don't think he's going to have any problems. We have all had stretches where we don't hit it solid and usually it's just a small tweak. It's such a short swing that it's not a hard thing to fix. I don't see that lasting more than a week or two.' Last year's champion Bubba Watson (left) presents winner Spieth with the green jacket at Augusta . Woods reacts after missing a birdie putt on the twelfth hole on Sunday afternoon . Woods hits from the edge of the pine by the tenth hole as the large crowds behind him watch on . It took a little longer than that – with considerably harder graft – but considering some feared we had seen the last of Tiger, this was a tentative return to form. If there was a turning point, it came at the 11th on day one, when he missed the green right and saved par with a quite fabulous chip. Anyone who had the chipping yips, it was said, would still be there now, trying to get up and down. Woods would have known the world was watching his every tic, too. His golf has not been without flaws since, not least his driving, but his short game was a weapon around Augusta, as it once was. There had been a practice round earlier in the week in which Woods was rumoured to have outplayed Spieth down the back nine. There was no sign of that individual superiority over the ensuing four days – 19 shots between them and Spieth leading wire to wire – but this was never about Woods winning at Augusta. This was about him being back in the game, holding his end up, about him looking like he was enjoying golf, and life, and there was certainly evidence of that. He will probably need to work sun up to sun down again, and to win a minor, before he can land a major, but would anyone bet against it given the sight of him walking Augusta on Sunday in the company of the world No 1? Ready to play some golf? One day Tiger may face down Rory and it will matter. And maybe even one day soon.
Tiger Woods finishes tied for seventeenth in the 2015 Masters at Augusta . Woods could only score 73 on Sunday, seven shots less than Rory McIlroy . There has been enough to suggest that Woods is not finished yet . Jordan Spieth won this year's Masters after finishing on 18 under par .