Free Falling

“I wanna free fall out into nothin’, gonna leave this world for a while…”

Jeff Lynne, Tom Petty

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The fall of golfer Tiger Woods from near-godlike status to mere mortality in just the last few years has been one of the most startling sports stories of the 21st Century. After missing the cut at the British Open at St. Andrews, Woods has now dropped to below 250 in the world golf rankings.

Tiger Woods was the number one ranked golfer in the world for most of the time between the years from approximately 1997 to 2010. He truly ruled golf to the point where he would usually win one out of every four or five tournaments he would enter, and he he could sometimes enter a golf tournament and Las Vegas would post odds where a bettor could bet on either Tiger Woods or the field. And a bet on Tiger would often be the winning bet.

During his reign as the unquestioned superstar of golf, he won an astounding 14 majors, and (thanks to a regaining of form in 2012, where he won five times), his current number of PGA tour wins has reached an astounding 79 PGA tour titles. He also won something like 40 more times in events all over the rest of the world. At one time, he was the reigning champion of all four Grand Slam events in the world of golf (double what current sensation Jordan Spieth has currently done).

Since then, however, the golf game of Tiger Woods has gone into complete free fall. Whether it is because of injuries or from being a golf swing confused, putting and chipping with the yips head case, he has dropped from the number one spot in golf to an unbelievable 258th in the world.

Even though the 250th best golfer in the world is massively better than the best guy you or I will ever see hitting balls at the local driving range, to see TIGER WOODS at that level is mind boggling. It staggers the mind to think that the same man who could go several years in a row without EVER missing a cut could now have a golf game in such a shattered state that he now has a difficult time in making a cut in the same tournaments that he used to dominate.

Here are the numbers you need to know.

When Tiger Woods won the British Open at St. Andrews in 2000, he won the tournament by eight strokes and finished at 19 under par. When Tiger Woods won the Open at the same St. Andrews in 2005, he won the tournament by five strokes and finished the tournament at 14 under par. That meant that he was shooting an average score of somewhere between a 67 or 68 in each round of those two tournaments. Those are the numbers you have to shoot to win at St. Andrews.

When Tiger Woods played the British Open at the same St. Andrews in 2015, he finished seven OVER par and missed the cut (by shooting a 76 and 75) by seven strokes. St. Andrews was playing “easier” in 2015 than in 2000 or 2005, as the overall field’s scores were significantly lower, but the fact that Woods was never even close to making the cut was the real shocker. (A case could be made that the Tiger Woods of now is now about 7 strokes per round worse than the Tiger Woods of his prime). Except, sadly for Woods, it WASN’T a shocker.

Because throughout the golf world, it was NOT a surprise that Tiger Woods floundered again in a major. His golf game AIN’T working. In the immortal words of British golf fans, it is bloody obvious now that he has significant issues with his golf game. Since it is HE who controls his golf game, that means that HE is the reason that he is playing badly. He might think that his problem is his golf swing, or some outside forces, but the fact of the matter is, the problem lies between his two ears in the deep recesses of his mind.

The fact that he is spiraling downward at such a rapid rate is obvious. The fact that he was once that great is also obvious. So, three questions arise. Can he be fixed? What will it take to fix him? And WILL he be fixed? I am not one from the camp that thinks he is finished. I think anyone with the capability of being great has that which once made him great STILL residing within him. He needs to regain about five strokes per round that he has been giving away by hitting bad drives, inaccurate iron shots, poor chips and a few less made putts. It IS achievable.

People can bash Tiger Woods while he is down, but he is capable of coming back to being a golfer good enough to shoot rounds like the rest of the guys in the top fifty in the world. He might not get back that brilliance of the 14 major wins, but he CAN be good enough to emerge from the abyss he has fallen into. He CAN be good enough to win again. He CAN even be good enough to maybe even win (probably at best, only one) a major again.

I have some ideas on how Tiger Woods the golfer can get back the basics in his game again, but that will have to be another article. For now, he will have to emerge from his free fall and get back onto stable ground (in his mind) first. And he will HAVE to do things differently in his approach to golf (his mind has to be free, not burdened) than the way he has been doing things lately. When a plan is not working, you change the plan.