Tiger WoodsMatt Slocum
Tiger Woods isn't the first elite golfer to look lost on the course, but he must be the most prominent to see his game shred into tatters.
Bobby Jones, Ben Hogan, Sam Snead, Jack Nicklaus: Not one of them experienced such a precipitous decline.
Woods hit the ball all over the place during the PGA Championship, where he shot 77-73 to miss the cut by six shots. "It's a step back that I missed the cut and that I'm not contending in the tournament," Woods said after his round Friday. He added that there was good news in that he felt healthy for the first time in a long time.
Woods hit some shots off the world while missing the cut for the first time in the 14 PGA Championships he's played. He took some violent slashes at the ball, especially on the 12th hole where he followed a double-bogey on the 11th with a foul ball of a drive into the woods to the left, a chip-out, and then a wild whack that also sailed left.
Another double.
Woods had been two over par for the round through seven holes, then had hit excellent shots on the eighth and ninth holes that led to birdies. He parred the 10th. He was seven over for the tournament and needed to get to four over to make the cut. Woods being Woods – well, once he was Woods, the guy who had won 14 majors and 57 other tournaments –a dim memory of him made you think he might do that.
No chance. Woods made some stellar swings, but for the most part he looked disorganized. He can't take his swing from the practice range to the course in a tournament. He drove into a bunker on the 18th hole, then took a rip at a 4-iron and found the pond in front of the green.
Woods is gone, and where will he go from here? CBS's Gary McCord suggested Friday that Woods should play some Nationwide Tour events to gain some confidence. That will never happen, and besides, it's an insult to the abilities of golfers on the Nationwide Tour.
There will be calls for Woods to dismiss his swing coach, Sean Foley, and return to Hank Haney or Butch Harmon, the instructors who helped him dominate the game. Woods changed his swing before, first under Harmon and later under Haney. And it's still possible that the changes he's trying to make will work into his tournament game. Woods said he and Foley will continue to work together.
Still, it's possible that Woods will never return to form. That doesn't necessarily mean the form he showed while winning those 14 majors, and looking like a winner even when he didn't come through. It means knowing where his golf ball is going.
Could it be that his brain is too crammed with competing swing thoughts? Maybe he's so confused that he'll never unscramble what's in there. Nick Faldo won six majors and later felt the need to alter his swing. When Peter Thomson, the Australian who won five Open Championships, was asked whether he thought Faldo would find his form again, he answered incisively.
"No, there's too much corruption of the hard drive," Thomson said.
Woods is so discombobulated that it seems he also is suffering from too much corruption of the hard drive – his golfing brain, that is. He's in the swing wilderness now, thrashing about for a solution.
Woods is outside the top 125 on the FedEx Cup points list, and said he won't play next week's Wyndham Championship in Greensboro, N.C. That would be his last chance to get inside the top 125 and make the FedEx playoff series. He'll play the Australian Open in Sydney Nov. 10-13, the week before the Presidents Cup in Melbourne.
U.S. captain Fred Couples said he'll hand Woods one of his picks for the Presidents Cup if he doesn't make the team on points and is healthy enough to play – as long as he plays the Australian Open. Right now, how can he justify the pick? How will other golfers who deserve to be picked feel about that?
Couples probably would say that Woods is Woods, and he belongs on the team.
But Woods isn't Woods any more. What's happening is not tragic – this is only golf. But it is pathetic.
ALSO FROM LORNE RUBENSTEIN:
Ernie Els not finding it 'Easy' these days
Memorable par threes more than intimidating
Adam Scott ready to win his first major
---
Lorne Rubenstein has written a golf column for The Globe and Mail since 1980. He has played golf since the early 1960s and was the Royal Canadian Golf Association's first curator of its museum and library at the Glen Abbey Golf Club in Oakville, Ontario and the first editor of Score, Canada's Golf Magazine, where he continues to write a column and features. He has won four first-place awards from the Golf Writers Association of America, one National Magazine Award in Canada, and, most recently, he won the award for the best feature in 2009 from the Golf Journalists Association of Canada. Lorne has written 11 books, including The Natural Golf Swing, with George Knudson (1988); Links: An Insider's Tour Through the World of Golf (1990); The Swing, with Nick Price (1997); The Fundamentals of Hogan, with David Leadbetter (2000); A Season in Dornoch: Golf and Life in the Scottish Highlands (2001); Mike Weir: The Road to the Masters (2003); A Disorderly Compendium of Golf, with Jeff Neuman (2006); and his latest, This Round's on Me (2009). He is a member of the Ontario Golf Hall of Fame and the Canadian Golf Hall of Fame. Lorne can be reached at rube@sympatico.ca . You can now follow him on Twitter @lornerubenstein