Smylie Kaufman fears that Rory McIlroy could be about to make a decision that will hurt his chances of winning The Masters for a second time next month.

McIlroy can take some positives from his performance at The Players Championship this past week. The Northern Irishman did not contend at TPC Sawgrass, but did get four rounds under his belt.

The 36-year-old had previously withdrawn from the Arnold Palmer Invitational ahead of the third round after tweaking his back in the warm-up.

Rory McIlroy undecided over his schedule ahead of The Masters

All eyes are going to be on Rory McIlroy once the golfing world heads to Augusta National in April. Of course, he is the defending champion after his emotional victory last year.

It will be fascinating to see whether the win frees him up at the first major of the year. He had been a Masters win away from completing the Career Grand Slam for more than a decade before stumbling across the line last year.

So his injury has come at a poor time. McIlroy spoke of not being sure whether he will play in another tournament before The Masters.

But speaking on The Smylie Show after Sunday’s final round at The Players, Smylie Kaufman expressed a worry about the prospect of McIlroy not playing again before heading down Magnolia Lane.

“I’m not concerned about his back. I would be concerned more about his form and having enough reps heading into Augusta. If he doesn’t play before Augusta, do I think that deters his chances of winning? I think it plays a factor,” he said.

“I think any time you take three weeks off leading into an event, especially when it’s not something that has been your typical routine, he’s kind of bounced around playing the week before or two weeks before, it seems like to me that Rory would be better suited to tee it up one more time, especially since he played four rounds and it didn’t seem like we saw videos of him labouring around.

“Who knows internally how bad it was for him this week. If he spends three weeks at home playing and practicing, sometimes when you show up to that Thursday round, you find some things about your game that you didn’t really know were going to come out in tournament play.

“I think it would probably be better if he showed up at Houston and played, and obviously I would love for him to play Houston or any of those events. Show up Wednesday night, play four rounds, don’t spend a whole week there, just go and see what it’s like under the gun.”

Why Rory McIlroy may be reluctant to play again before he defends his Masters title

McIlroy would be forgiven for wanting to replicate his schedule in the build-up to last year’s Masters.

He did win at Pebble Beach and then at The Players Championship in the weeks leading up to the first major of the year.

He also featured in the Texas Children’s Houston Open. McIlroy finished tied for fifth at Memorial Park, five shots back of Min Woo Lee.

It seemed like an ideal result for McIlroy at the time. The game was clearly sharp, but another win would have somehow made expectations ever harder to deal with.

Finishing behind Scottie Scheffler took a small amount of the focus off of the world number two.

He perhaps feels that continuing to work out of the spotlight this time around is a good way to take some of the pressure off ahead of what is going to be a very surreal Masters for McIlroy.