By now, Tiger Woods should have had a chance to defend his Mas­ters title. By now, there should be an answer for his rabid fans about just how much time they should devote to cheer­ing him on in the U.S. Open.

But in a year where answers are hard to come from any­where, there isn’t a sim­ple one about his chances of win­ning a fourth U.S. Open.

It’s so com­pli­cat­ed that even Woods seems to be hav­ing prob­lems fig­ur­ing it out.

“This year I real­ly haven’t putted as well as I want­ed to, and the times I did make a few swing mis­takes, I missed it in the wrong spots,” Woods said Tues­day. “Con­se­quent­ly, I just didn’t have the right looks at it. I’ve com­pound­ed mis­takes here and there that end­ed up not mak­ing me able to make pars or a birdie run, and con­se­quent­ly I haven’t put myself in con­tention to win events.”

Don’t feel bad if that seemed dif­fi­cult to fol­low. With Woods, we’ve been guess­ing at things for years.

Is his back OK? Is he rusty from not play­ing enough? How about the putter?

And add this one into the mix for this tour­na­ment: At the age of 44, will he be able to match play­ers two decades younger when it comes to hack­ing out of the rough and steady­ing him­self on the 6‑footers for par?

We’ll know soon enough, with Woods tee­ing off ear­ly Thurs­day at Winged Foot in a pair­ing that includes two play­ers who, unlike Woods, have a lot more pro­fes­sion­al golf in their future than they do in their past. One of them, new­ly crowned PGA cham­pi­on Collin Morikawa, wasn’t even born when Woods won his first PGA Tour event in 1996, while Justin Thomas, until last month, was offi­cial­ly the best play­er in golf.

Odd­s­mak­ers don’t exact­ly fan­cy his chances, mak­ing Woods a 35–1 shot to edge clos­er to the biggest record he doesn’t hold in golf — the 18 majors won by Jack Nick­laus. Woods him­self doesn’t sound ter­ri­bly con­fi­dent, even if he’s not quite ready yet to take his place as an elder states­man of golf.

“I think it gets hard­er to win as we all age,” he said.

Com­pound­ing the issue for Woods this week isn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly the length of Winged Foot, which stretch­es near­ly 7,500 yards with a par of 70. He’s plen­ty long to still be com­pet­i­tive with play­ers like Thomas and Morikawa, even if they will like­ly be out­driv­ing him in the open­ing rounds.

It’s what hap­pens when he can’t find the fair­way and needs to scram­ble that will be the tough­est part. By all accounts, the rough at Winged Foot is bru­tal, which means Woods will need to over­come mis­takes off the tee with the kind of short game that has won him 15 majors.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the putts under 10 feet that used to be auto­mat­ic for Woods are auto­mat­ic no longer. It doesn’t help that he missed the FedEx Cup Play­offs and hasn’t played com­pet­i­tive­ly in three weeks.

There’s also the fact that in six rounds in two major cham­pi­onships at Winged Foot, Woods is a com­bined 18-over-par. That includes the 2006 U.S. Open at Winged Foot, where Woods shot 76–76 and missed the cut.

Still, as his mag­i­cal win at the Mas­ters last year remind­ed every­one, it would be a mis­take to sell him short.

“When I won the Mas­ters last year I was not feel­ing par­tic­u­lar­ly well pri­or to that,” Woods said. “My neck was both­er­ing me. I didn’t play in Bay Hill. For some rea­son I felt phys­i­cal­ly bet­ter and my train­ing ses­sions felt good. I changed shafts in my dri­ver right before the event, and I was able to start turn­ing the ball over. Then all of a sud­den I put myself in con­tention and I wasn’t real­ly — I wasn’t lead­ing but I was near the lead, and each day I pro­gres­sive­ly got a lit­tle bit bet­ter, and come Sun­day, I put all the pieces together.”

Could that hap­pen again at Winged Foot, a course that doesn’t have the wide fair­ways of Augus­ta Nation­al and is lined with deep rough? A course that Woods doesn’t know near­ly as well and hasn’t had pre­vi­ous success?

Woods isn’t mak­ing pre­dic­tions, and any­one else is sim­ply guess­ing. Things tend to hap­pen in golf that can’t be pre­dict­ed, as evi­denced by Morikawa’s win at the PGA Cham­pi­onship last month in his first major as a professional.

One thing is clear: Time is run­ning out on Woods if he is to add four more major titles to break the record he wants the most. And snag­ging one dur­ing a pan­dem­ic would be a per­fect spring­board head­ing into the Mas­ters in Novem­ber, where he will be the defend­ing champion.

Mean­while, don’t for­get: He is Tiger Woods.