What is remarkable about Tiger’s fall is that he is almost two years into winning nothing on the pro circuit. He did take a time of sabbatical and has persevered injuries that have set him back. It was academic that this would happen it just is a little surprising that he was still ranked so high for so long.

Three years ago we could of rationalized that he had earned his placement and he was still competitive.

In 2011, he has placed OK, but other players have consistently been better, and the missed tournaments and early concessions have started to catch up with Tiger.

It begs me to question a few things about PGA Golf and Tiger’s future in respect of his brilliant twelve years at the pinnacle. I shortened it to twelve years because in the last two years I did not consider Woods anywhere near the top of his game, and with all the arrows pointing down this is more than just a slump or injury rehabilitation thing.

WORLD RANKINGS

The world rankings for each player are determined based on points accumulated from important recognized golf tournaments over a two year rolling period. There is a higher emphasis placed on the last 13 weeks and placement in recent tournaments which are worth the most. Those 13 week credits become reduced in value as time goes by but still count toward rankings for the 91 weeks that follow.

So guys that win/place consistently stay ranked, and guys who won their last important tournament more than a year and a half ago like Tiger can only hold their position as long as nine other guys don’t get hot enough in the current to knock them down.

So the rankings only exhibit a slow leak of Tiger past worthiness and that he has just now been dropped out of the top 10 because he just hasn’t performed great lately, only highlights that nobody else bumped him out of the top bracket. And twelfth place is still a very awesome place to be for someone in search of his winning ways.

We know that golf is a mentally and physically gruelling sport to stay good at, but let’s be honest, in other sports when key players are out injured for long stretches (or dealing with personal issues) we move along without them.

We rarely expect a baseball pitcher that has arm issues to regain his fastball form. We expect hockey players that have knee injuries to lose a step, and we know that once an NFL quarterback hits that wall of indecisiveness after multiple hits against the turf that he won't come back the same.

Before Tiger had his much publicized personal dilemma he had a knee injury which partially affected which tournaments he would play in, and that act alone of avoiding tournaments helped support his standing in the world rankings.

He played through the injury before having corrective surgery, and the point system did not punish his standing because of it. It could be because not long before his knee surgery was his US Open win that he played through in pain and discomfort into an extra round to come from behind and win - the type of win that legends are made of.

If anything the injury kept Tiger higher in the world rankings because he placed exceptionally well in every contest he entered (with breaks in between) for someone with the type of injuries he was playing through.

TIGER IN DECLINE

After 18-24 months clearly missing a step in his game can we say that Tiger has made the turn into career decline?

When the key element of your game is power or strength there has to be a finite peak and its hard to argue that Tiger has not already been to that summit of excellence.

He still has physical issues that are holding him back, like his Achilles tendon which has taken him off the course a number of times and that can only mean less practice time to improve and catch back up to his own pedigree of greatness.

But could Tiger be actually fading fast into irrelevance?

And could it be a multitude of things that is causing the end to happen at a much sharper rate than we might have imagined when he went under the knife to repair his knee two years ago?

If we truly believe the game of golf is the same game it has always been, and that it’s all about Tiger having changed both between the ears and in his physical comfort level between the links then that is an easy answer, but probably an incomplete one.

I would be more apt to suggest that Tiger actually struggled the last four seasons, and his inability to groom his game in the last three because of injuries (and what not) actually has accelerated that decline because the game of pro golf has changed so much more than ever since Tiger first became top-ranked back in 1997.

The only way to stay ahead of a moving target is to be on target. Tiger might be finally getting overwhelmed by issues of the course that he used to master just because he hasn’t been able to dominate anymore.

Moving target you ask?

Exactly, it may be time to admit that golf has finally been made “Tiger-proofed” against the golfers who started making their names by winning the distance competition off the tee. Tiger the main player who started to dominate the sport in 1996, motivated a wave of new golfers that have since entered the game playing to their own strength of being able to crush the ball to give them a chance at most tournaments.

In the middle of the last decade at Tiger’s height of prominence he was winning just about everything, and contending on all the main courses and golf organizers started to figure out ways to make playing courses trickier so that the complete game of golf beyond who could hit the ball the farthest would matter.

I am not saying that Tiger never had the rest of the game in his club bag. He was very good at the clutch game, being close to the pin when it mattered and avoiding course hazards enough to win as much as he had.

It’s just that when you are healthy and mentally tuned in to what needs to be done to win those minor course adjustments probably affect you less than it would a sore and rusty player.

Tiger proved he could adjust his game from course to course and win with the style that was required, at least until he had the bad knee.

That is where he probably started to be punished more than anyone else by the very adjustments that came into the game mainly because of him.

RAISED GOLF PROFILE

You also have to consider that Tiger raised golf’s profile around the world, and not surprisingly just like in tennis, a sport prompted internationally in the 1980s by the ascent of American’s like John McEnroe, good international players started to dominate from Europe, Asia, and South Africa, and their game was modelled after Woods’ game.

Woods success enticed younger, faster, technically sound, healthier and hungrier versions of him that have come into the game and dominated at what only he did best.

When I grew up I always figured golf to be the hardest of sports to master. That was because it appeared on TV to need patience and the ability to stay within oneself and repeat things the same way to win.

That was when golf was still very much a touch game and the pro ranks were dominated by a group of the same guys that hit the ball all about the same distance and on their best days mastered the putting or chipping game. The better players actually were known for managing well if not completely avoiding the bunkers or the rough.

The Tiger golf years have been all about avoiding anything short of the green. They were all getting there, the leaders were, and then the guy who was closest to the pin by the third stroke was probably staying in contention.

Most of the changes in the game of golf with regard to style of play, type of player, and course changes have come as the game enjoyed its greatest popularity.

All of these can be traced back to Tiger Woods being on top of golf.

The players that started to come into pro golf all had to be able to drive the ball like Tiger. These guys got into the sport because they knew they could pound a golf ball a long way. This in itself made them competitive.

The players that started to make their assault to the top of the rankings were mostly from outside North America.

The people who run tournaments and run golf courses began to tweak the playing surfaces to try and keep the game entertaining, so as to get away from becoming a driving range competition.  Ironic since the player who was best at that was what made the sport popular because he was different than the status quo.

As much as we all can understand that Tiger drives ratings, we assume that many better ratings are driven when he has a chance to lose. Nobody is tuning in to see how far a guy can drive the ball while running away from the rest of the field. It’s hard to really appreciate that distance game on TV.

The golf administrators actually got this right, and have slowly tipped golf back from a power game to a better mix of strength, power and finesse.

NEVER BE BACK ON TOP

So if Tiger gets back to form it probably will not be good enough for him to stay as dominant anywhere close to where he used to be. I may even take bets on Tiger never getting back in that top form.

In 2001 and 2006 Woods was ranked number one both years.

Seven of the guys who were ranked in the top 11 in those years were the same.

Woods, Phil Mickelson, Ernie Els, Retief Goosen, Sergio Garcia, Padraig Harrington and Vijay Singh were so ranked for most of the five years between 2001 and 2006.

But look at it now.

Woods is now at twelve and only Phil Mickelson (4) and Britain’s Luke Donald (2) of guys that were ranked as high in 2006 are even listed in the 2011 list of golf’s top 10.

So if every course stayed the same we can see where the game would have gone. The overall adjustments though would make it hard for even a healthy Tiger to win consistently like he did in the middle of last decade.

Is Tiger still better than these guys that are coming after him?

In golf acumen yes any experienced golfer would be but there are things right now holding Tiger back from actually even competing with these players on a level playing ground again.

Perhaps he is fortunate, given all the attention he was given while at the very top that he has been able to stay there as long as he was. The game is ultimately the richer because of Tiger but it may be that how Tiger helped build the game is actually now deconstructing him.