I recently bought an IKEA loft bed for my son. The morning after I purchased it, I disassembled his old bed, tidied away the old toys and rubbish formerly under it, vacuumed the floor, painstakingly hauled the first two boxes of chipboard slabs upstairs, took a deep breath, and finally started building the new bed.
After maybe 30 minutes of assembly, I realized I’d done everything backwards: the shelving unit I’d been working on was facing the wrong way, and I needed to start over. So I reluctantly started unscrewing everything…and in doing so, I carelessly allowed one upright plank to topple over, ripping two screws out of their sockets in a way which looked unrepairable. As a Tourette’s-like torrent of profanity escaped my lips, I thought I’d ruined everything.
What a perfect metaphor for Tiger Woods’ golf game right now.
A few weeks ago, a buddy emailed me to say, “You HAVE to write about Tiger. This may be the most astounding story of the last several decades if he’s really lost his fastball and can't break 80 – he may not be able to even finish a round at Augusta like this.” In one sense, that is hyperbole: Tiger Woods is 39 years old, and many great golfers (Jones, Nelson, Palmer, Watson, Ballesteros…the list goes on) were washed up by age 39. Since 1960, the average and median age of major championship winners is 32 – the same age Tiger was when he last won a major – and less than 10% of all majors have been won by players over 40. And the recent examples of David Duval and Ian Baker-Finch prove that outstanding golfers do sometimes forget how to play golf well.
Still, a whole generation of golf fans can’t remember a time when Tiger wasn’t golf’s true north, and legendary sportsmen rarely collapse as quickly and comprehensively as Tiger seems to be. His back problems were foreseeable, if unfortunate, but his mind is degrading even faster than his body: his attempts to tear down, tidy up and retool his golf swing appear to have crumpled his previously adamantine self-belief, as most shockingly evidenced by the state of his short game. I know double-digit handicappers who chip and pitch better than Tiger does at present, and despite his protestations to the contrary, expert consensus and common sense both suggest the root cause is mental. And now, everyone from Butch Harmon (happy to help if asked) to Rocco Mediate (could fix Tiger “in a few minutes” but also thinks he should consult Lee Trevino) has advice for Tiger – and also pity, which is way worse.
Is Tiger up for this fight? To extend my IKEA metaphor, although it took eight hours and I’m still sore even as I type this paragraph, I found a way to finish building that bed; of course, I had no real choice but to finish it. For a long time, we all thought Tiger had no choice either: he’d either catch Nicklaus’ record of 18 majors or die trying. But now his glutes aren’t firing, he’s on a self-imposed double-secret PGA Tour probation, and it seems he’d rather chill in the mountains with girlfriend Lindsey Vonn than fiendishly plot a comeback. Does Tiger know he’s started down the wrong road to recovery, and can he figure out how to step back and undo the damage before moving forward? Will he ever win another major, or indeed any other tournament? How much further will his world ranking drop before he next makes a cut? Does he even care anymore? Tiger’s shadow, however droopy, will continue to darken all of professional golf until some of these questions are answered.