What do you know, Tiger Woods has decided not to play the upcoming Wells Fargo Championship at the Quail Hollow club in Charlotte, N.C. He likes to take three weeks off after the Masters, and Quail Hollow doesn't fit. It's moved into a slot in that third week. No Tiger, then, but Rory McIlroy and Phil Mickelson, among other players Golf Channel likes to call "notables," will be there. Woods missed the cut at Quail Hollow the last two years, and reports have surfaced that the eighth and 10th greens at the highly regarded course had no grass on them and have had to be resodded only this week. It's all but unheard of to resod greens so near a PGA Tour event. But PGA Tour players wouldn't appreciate putting on dirt. Who does? It's impossible to know whether Woods was aware about the condition of the greens, and whether the problems - and other greens are also in trouble - contributed to his decision not to play. The official line from his camp is that the tournament, which he won in 2007, doesn't fit into his schedule this year. He'll next compete in the PLAYERS - all caps, says the PGA Tour, so what the heck - the week after the Wells Fargo. Woods has won the Players - never mind the caps after the first reference, sorry - in 2001. He doesn't play many tournaments where he wins so infrequently, but the all but a major is at the PGA Tour's headquarter course, TPC Sawgrass, in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla. And so Woods plays. He said last year that a player can't "fake" it on the course, whatever that means. I think it means that TPC Sawgrass takes a whack out of players when they miss shots. The course is penal, for sure. If he participates in tournaments according to his past itinerary, Woods will compete in the Players and then the Memorial Tournament at Muirfield Village Golf Club in Dublin, Ohio. The Memorial goes three weeks after the Players. He's won the Memorial five times, including last year. His next tournament after the Memorial would likely be two weeks later, in the U.S. Open at Merion Golf Club in Ardmore, Penn. Woods, of course, cares more about majors than other tournaments by a factor in the octillions. This isn't to say that he doesn't care about some other PGA Tour events. Sure he does. Otherwise how could he have won a gazillion of them? Yes, when we talk Tiger Woods, we talk big numbers. No number is bigger than the 18 majors that Jack Nicklaus, the host at the Memorial, won. Woods wants to hit that number and more. He missed grabbing his 15th major at the Masters, where he tied for fourth. He finished four shots out of the playoff that Adam Scott won against Angel Cabrera. I don't know how many times I've read or heard - a billion? - that he'd have made the playoff if his ball hadn't ricocheted off the flagstick on the 15th green in the second round and into the hazard to the left, and if he hadn't taken an illegal drop and been penalized two shots. Yeah, right. If. The flawed thinking is that had the shot Woods hit on the 15th not slammed off the flagstick and into the water, his ball would have finished near the hole. He'd have made a birdie four. Instead, he bogied the hole after his drop and terrific next shot. Add the two-shot penalty he was assessed later - and the controversy continues over whether he should have been disqualified - and he posted an eight. Not four, but eight. A big number, and four shots higher. But it makes no sense to claim that Woods would have finished nine-under and not five-under had this and that and that not happened. Any golf round is contingent on what transpired before, no matter how much players say they try to stay in the moment, etc., etc. My go-to rejoinder when I hear somebody say that "If only he hadn't been penalized, or missed four putts inside six feet, etc., etc." is to mention Bob Dickson's story. Dickson lost the 1965 U.S. Amateur to Bob Murphy by one shot. Dickson inadvertently had an extra club in his bag during the second round, and was penalized the maximum of two shots a hole for two holes- hey, what do you know, four shots. It's been said over the years that had he not been penalized those four shots, Dickson would have won by three shots. I call bs on that belief. Dickson was so hot at himself for his mistake that he birdied a bunch of holes after learning of the penalty. He told me that he probably wouldn't have gone on such a tear had he not been angry with himself. How do I know this? Well, I caddied for Dickson a few times a year for a while after meeting him at the 1970 Canadian Open at the Hunt Club in London, Ont. Dickson, by the way, won the 1967 U.S. and British Amateurs. He never did win with me on the bag, but I was always careful to count to 14 before he started a round. He taught me an important lesson: Retroactive scoring, or "If only" scoring, is dumb. Woods didn't win the Masters. Simple as that. Woods won't play Quail Hollow next week. He will play the U.S. Open. That we know. As for whether he will hit that big number of 15 by winning, maybe a soothsayer knows, or a mathematician who deals in probabilities. If only...