UNSURPRISINGLY, IT'LL BE A LONG ROAD FOR WOODS

Just the other day, I was playing golf, and had a good round going. A few pars, no doubles, I was in a zone. Then I decided to check my phone. Bad mistake.

Once I saw the sms' and started replying to some of them, my mind waivered, my game slumped, and the strokes started adding up. How many times has that happened to you? Thought so.

The mind is a amazing, wonderful, tenuous, fragile, mysterious, and most of all, difficult to figure out. The slightest bit of distraction, and we can open up a plethora of thoughts leading to a million different avenues to lead us astray, or to bring us back to a part of our past that we either cherish, or dread to remember.

Watching Tiger implode, explode and altogether self-destruct at Firestone, I am brought back to my initial words early in the year that he should have taken a break from golf. I am more than ever, convinced now that he should have.

As formidable as he has shown himself to be through the last decade, no man can focus on anything - least of all the cerebrally demanding game of golf - when his personal life is in trouble. Tiger may indicated many times that he is above and beyond distraction, sinking putts after putts to win tournaments in his relatively short pro career, but we know that it would be a matter of time (or in this case, circumstance) that will be his Waterloo.

I have no doubt that he loves his children (his wife, I'm not too sure), and they mean more to him than anything in the world. Any father would feel that way. How would you think he feels if the threat of him losing custody is not only real, but inevitable? Where would he find the impetus to play, to win, to even compete - especially since he's won everything (several times over) there is to win? Nicklaus' record seems so secondary at this stage in his life.

Strangely enough, even when he's playing badly, he makes the news. That is something I cannot seem to get a grip on. Does the media think that he is the same person we all know this time last year? I hardly think so. His world has turned upside down, much to his own fault, he has lost his coach, in some ways his swing, and I dare say some of his confidence.

But that, I feel, is expected, and every star in every sport has probably gone through something like that in their lives. But there is still time, lots of it. Tiger is just 35 this year, and if you think that Nicklaus and Singh won majors into their forties, there is still a decade or so left for him to regain his life, his swing, his aura.

If he were to come to me, I'd say go take a break, Tiger. Spend some time with yourself, with your children, with people whom you trust have your best interest at heart. Play a little golf, practice if you feel the need to, but most importantly, try to enjoy the game and the competition again. You've messed up, now go fix whatever you can fix and move on.

 

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