Woods’s Downfall Is as Gripping as His Reign

[boheo392]

Woods’s Downfall Is as Gripping as His Reign
Woods is living out the worst performance nightmare of his career, wandering around lost, in public. Very much in public. One of the greatest athletes of our time is suddenly in need of a total reboot.
After Woods played the worst tournament of his career last weekend, I began to wonder: has any great athlete, at the top of any sport, ever had his or her game blown to smithereens so fast ― not just from age, not just from injury, but pretty obviously from some deeper miasma of psyche and soma.
“He can’t read the greens!” exclaimed an old friend on the phone the other night, the near nonagenarian Bill Mazer, a great New York sports broadcaster and a particular expert on technique and kinesiology. (The Amazing Mr. Mazer works out almost every day.) I don’t claim to understand golf, but what I think Bill was telling me was, this guy’s game is really messed up.
Maybe Woods’s fog will clear in time for Thursday’s opening round of the P.G.A. Championship in Wisconsin, or maybe it won’t. He admits he is reeling from his downfall of the past nine months ― the abrupt revelation that he was a serial philanderer, and the ensuing impact on his marriage and his career and his image. His everything.
Woods is under more public stress than perhaps any other athlete we have seen. Golf can induce the staggers, but this is something else. Woods has to know that the public view of him ranges from a great athlete struggling to pull his life together to somebody who was shallow and smug before the downfall. Who really knows him? I swing back and forth in my opinion and probably so does a huge swath of the public. Does he feel it on every backswing? I bet he does.
Can guilt or shame ― or just what he thinks is bad luck and bad publicity ― tear down an athlete before his time? I know enough about superstars with the morals of alley cats who have performed amazing feats of derring-do on the field or court, their private lives in tatters. No names mentioned.
Tiger Woods has put himself in a slump the likes of which nobody has seen. He always had his father and skilled advisers, and his own confidence. Now he is alone.
Every sports fan has seen the greatest athletes start to erode. Roger Federer, just turned 29, is losing matches here and there that he never would have lost a year or two ago. Derek Jeter, 36, was hitting .276 as of Wednesday. And these exemplary athletes, as far as I know, do not have the dark side we have come to see in Woods.
We’ve all seen great baseball hitters like Ted Williams and Stan Musial have a sudden dip for a year and make some adjustments and bounce back strong for another year or two.
We’ve all seen great athletes fall apart from injuries. Dizzy Dean was hit in the toe by a batted ball in the 1937 All-Star Game. Pete Reiser of the Brooklyn Dodgers ran into too many walls. Don Mattingly hurt his back. Gale Sayers and Bo Jackson were two of the greatest runners I ever saw ― for a few professional seasons, until injuries took them down. Then there were the ’80s. Was there a greater young pitcher than Dwight Gooden?
But has anybody ever imploded the way Woods has? I put the question to some valued older colleagues.
Mazer suggested Mike Tyson, 23, a bully who had never been challenged, suddenly getting knocked outby Buster Douglas in 1990 and never recovering his mojo.
Bud Collins, a journalist for all seasons before he became the gaudy tennis guru of our age, noted how Michael Vick could not regain his stride after doing time for dogfighting. Also on a moral plane, Collins suggested Roscoe Tanner, one of the hardest hitters in tennis, who wrecked his life with shady financial dealings.
Frank Litsky, the longtime New York Times sportswriter, recalled covering Joe Louis’s fight with Rocky Marciano in 1951, and how Louis’s physique and mental state were “pathetic.” But Louis was 38 by then, ancient for a boxer, and drained by too many punches, too much life.
Several colleagues recalled watching Willie Mays stumble around with the Mets in the 1973 postseason, but Mays was 42, being used almost as a mascot by the Mets’ ownership. Not his fault.
Then there are the legal shadows over Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Lance Armstrong, but long after these great athletes had their acknowledged great careers.
This raises one more question about Woods’s contact with the Canadian doctor Anthony Galea, now being investigated for providing performance-enhancing drugs to athletes. Woods has admitted being treated with blood-replacement therapy by Galea.
We don’t know much more. We only know that with his sang-froid and his Popeye arms protruding from his cranberry shirts, Woods was once a sight to behold. Currently puzzling out the topography of a golf course, Tiger Woods is still a sight to behold.

[thedeparted]

he'll bounce back

[Subb]

im with jak he'll get his groove back

[glenofimaal]

I think he will eventually get back to his former form (lol) and beat Jack's record

[Iceskater101]

yeah he is just stressed out with everything or something
he will get his swing back
its just sad because he was the only reason I watched golf and he is doing terrible..

[Subb]

its because he no longer has that self pride in all the women he banged

[Dess]

I would guess it's because he knows how people are watching and judging him now that his personal life is out in public. I would be a bit "off" too if everyone found out I was cheating on my spouse....