Tiger has never looked so lost heading into national championship

As Tiger Woods returns to the United States Open this week at Pebble Beach, the site of his still-stunning victory in 2000, he is facing some uncomfortable truths and difficult barriers. Four days before the tournament begins, Woods is trying to find a game that will hold up under major championship pressure.

In fact, with significant gaps in his game apparent in the four tournaments he has played in the run-up to the Open, Woods, 34, barely resembles the carefree, unfettered young man who won here by a record 15 strokes a decade ago. In a situation that could not have been imagined before last November’s one-car accident in front of his Florida home set off a scandal unlike any other golf has ever seen, Woods is floundering into the second major of the year, beset by doubts, flaws, frailties and distractions from the fallout.

Johnny Miller, the 1973 Open champion and NBC commentator, recently said it would take “a small miracle” for Woods to win this Open, and Woods himself might not argue with Miller’s assessment.

Barely clinging to his ranking as the No. 1 player in the world, Woods has no momentum. Since returning from his self-imposed exile for the Masters in April, he has not threatened to win and has had no real scoring breakthroughs. His average score in 13 rounds is 71.07, which would rank him 83rd on the PGA Tour.

Tiger Woods, 83rd on the tour in scoring average? He has won the Vardon Trophy for the lowest scoring average 8 of the 13 years he has been on tour — twice averaging 67.79. On the course and off, the numbers that are supposed to be low are high, and vice versa.

Although he has publicly denied it, he has seemingly lost his confidence. And swagger? Hardly. For the first time in 10 years, Woods was not atop the Sports Q Scores list when the June numbers were announced; the 47-year-old system, operated by Marketing Evaluations in Manhasset, N.Y., ranks the familiarity and appeal of personalities. He plunged to 25th in popularity, and his negative ratings doubled.

If Woods could start driving the ball in the fairway with any consistency, his fortunes could change quickly. But at the Players Championship, even before he withdrew with a neck injury during the final round, he hit several wild tee shots, missing one fairway by 50 yards. At the Memorial, where a year ago he hit every fairway during a final-round 65, Woods hit 68 percent for the tournament, ranking 70th of the 71 players who made the cut. In his final round, he hit two spectators on his first two drives.

If he drives the ball like that at Pebble Beach, where the fairways are firm and running, sloped in some places toward the ocean, he will not make the cut.

Even his lofty expectations seem to have fallen. When he said he hoped to “play all four rounds” before the Memorial, it almost sounded like a joke. When he got his wish, finishing two strokes clear of a group in 23rd place, Woods tried to be positive.

“I felt like this week, I hit some really good shots, shots that I had been lacking,” he said. “And I was able to shape the ball. I was still a little one-dimensional, but I could draw the ball really well.”

Contrast his pointing to some good shots with his summary of his game on the eve of the 2000 Open.

“I’ve hit a lot of good shots in my practice sessions,” he said. “I’ve played some pretty good rounds; I’ve shot some pretty good numbers. It just kind of makes you believe that you’re heading in the right direction. I’m trying to pick sides of the fairway I want to hit the ball on, shape it in there to 10-yard-wide fairways, that kind of thing. And I was able to do it.

“And that leads you to believe that if you can do it there, you can definitely do it in a tournament.”

At the point in the season when he was once the most focused, Woods is adrift, uncertain. He has taken to going on about how limited competitive exposure has put his game at an early-season stage while most players are in midseason form.

All this comes from a man who has won at least once in his first four events in 11 of 13 years. He has never begun a season as he has this year: a tie for fourth, a missed cut, a withdrawal during the final round and a tie for 19th.

Woods has also never faced turmoil like what he brought upon himself this year by admitting his infidelity. Will he exacerbate it by deciding to go without a swing instructor for the first time since he was 4? Some experts say it will help him clear his head.

Perhaps it will. The record shows Woods had almost equal professional success with Butch Harmon and Hank Haney, his only two coaches as a pro. He won 35 times, including eight majors, with Harmon, and 36 times, including six majors, with Haney.

Woods does not pretend to have all the answers about swing flaws, and when asked about them, he smiled and talked about the club-position flaw that has led to his missing right and left.

“Same thing,” he said at Memorial. “Club’s behind me, just like it was when I was working with Butch, just like it was when I was working with Hank. That’s just my fault, and that’s just one of the things that I tend to fall into.”

When he put on a clinic a decade ago in the Open, he had no such flaw. Harmon told Golf Digest recently that Woods then “had the feeling like he was taking the club a little outside and up.”

Harmon continued, “He was free of mechanical thoughts, and he had this pure aggression.”

Woods drove the ball longer and straighter than anyone in the Open field in 2000. He putted better than almost everyone. He was calmer, more confident and more focused, and he believed in himself. In a prescient insight early that week, the former tour player and NBC reporter Roger Maltbie saw Woods hit a 7-iron from the right rough on the par-5 sixth hole almost 210 yards over Stillwater Cove onto the green.

“It’s not a fair fight,” Maltbie said.

And it was not. Whether Woods is able to insinuate himself into a fight this week, despite all current evidence to the contrary, is the question. If he is, it will not be the first time a golfer has found something just before winning an Open. But it will be the first time Woods has looked this lost this close to the national championship.

-The National Post