Tiger slipping deeper into the woods

Feature by Anand Datla

March 31, 2015: The crisis is deepening for Tiger Woods with each passing week. While the game and its keepers wait eagerly for the return of the iconic player, the news that Woods has slipped outside the top 100 has come as a dampener. The American has already confirmed that he isn’t in shape to compete at the Houston Open this week. That leaves Tiger facing the prospect of a wet return at the Masters, if at all he shows up. Meanwhile though, it must hurt Tiger to know that he is outside the top 100 for the first time since 1996, when he started his professional career.

At the time he turned professional in September 1996, Woods was ranked 433rd in the world. But he wasted no time languishing, as he won the Las Vegas Invitational to collect the first of his 79 titles and jump to 75th on the Official World Golf Rankings.

As he continued his sensational march through the ranks, Woods leaped to the top of the heap when he finished 19th at the US Open, less than a year after his professional debut.

Having scaled innumerable peaks in the seasons that followed, Woods hit a major hiccup in 2009 when his spouse discovered some salacious details on his phone. Ever since then, Woods has struggled with emotional and physical turmoil.

His fortunes have swung wildly since then – a rare satisfying performance lost in the flood of below par showings that began to hurt his reputation on the course. His failures on course only served to bruise his already damaged ego even further as the misery of his personal life was compounded by his failure to make a mark on the course.

Woods sank to a desperate nadir, when he shot 82 at the Phoenix Open this January. It was his worst round of golf as a professional and the result saw him drop outside the top 50 earlier this season. Woods suffered further agony when he failed to qualify for the WGC Cadillac Championships, where he was a serial winner.

Having spent a whopping 683 weeks at the top of the golfing world, Woods surely will begin to feel even more suffocated with life outside the top 100. While it will be very interesting to see him deal with the new reality, all eyes are on Woods to see if he can indeed make the Masters next week as promised all along.