Tiger Woods may never regain the gift of genius, says Bruce Critchley

After another torrid week for the ailing Tiger Woods at The Memorial, Sky Sports commentator Bruce Critchley believes he may never be able to rediscover the form that carried him to 14 major titles.

Its speaks volumes for the achievements of Tiger Woods and the hold he once had on the game, that seven years after he last won a major championship there are still those who wonder when, rather than if, he will resume his rich harvest.

Any other golfer, including the likes of Jack Nicklaus and Ben Hogan in their pomp, had he gone so long without an important win when their game had so obviously left them, would no longer be talked of as possible winners. And yet, and yet…. such was Tiger’s dominance in his decade of brilliance, the ability to produce extraordinary shots on many a Sunday afternoon, that his game on occasion took on air of the supernatural. 

Great talent, yes, but somewhere in there one felt an extraordinary self belief, which together with an air of entitlement, led him to expect – and others to expect with him – that something special would happen in his favour; a combination of expectation leading so often to what actually took place.

It is no coincidence that, during that time, whenever he led a major with a round to go, he won; part of the same conundrum was that when he wasn’t in front, he never did. One conclusion is that when up there his sheer presence usually interfered with the games and competitiveness of those who should have been the most likely to challenge him.

Intimidation factor

Players like Phil Mickelson and Ernie Els just didn’t seem to have their games when Woods was there, the moment they most needed it. It was a Bob May, a YE Yang or even our own Rich Beem – players, dare I say it, who had little to lose - who came through, just the once, to challenge the big man.

Intimidation was certainly part of Tiger’s armour and at an extraordinary level to so affect the performance of truly great players. Woods achieved a solitary domination never before seen in golf

Intimidation was certainly part of Tiger’s armour and at an extraordinary level to so affect the performance of truly great players. In an era when evolution of equipment had made the playing field ever more level – when clubs and balls enabled relatively humble players to come up with shots that a decade earlier only a Seve might have dreamt of – Woods achieved a solitary domination never before seen in golf.

Throughout the 20th century there were triumvirates – Taylor, Vardon & Ray, Hogan Sneed and Nelson; Palmer Player & Nicklaus; others too  – yet at a time when it should have been harder to stand out against the rest, there he was on his own.

Only a few of us felt, after the fateful day in 2009 when his world and marriage fell apart, that would be the end of the Tiger Woods era, at least as far as major championships were concerned. By then they were all that mattered to him; just a few more and he would pass Jack Nicklaus’ record, and thereafter there could be no doubt as to whom was the best golfer of all time.

The reasons for thinking so negatively were two-fold. Most telling, the pinnacle of excellence and superiority, both on and off the course he had created around himself, and on which so much of his dominance depended, crumbled. Remove a major element of any edifice and the whole collapses.

Devastating blow

Where once there was fear and awe there were now smirks and sniggers. Proud, aloof and distant, Woods was now seen to have feet of clay. What would have been passing amusement for others was a devastating blow to a man of his persona and psyche. It was bound to effect his golf.

Then, on the golfing front Woods had not had a swing of his own since his middle teens, since Earl Woods had engaged Butch Harmon to look after his son’s game. From then on Tiger’s swing had been a joint affair, first with Harmon, later with Hank Haney and Sean Foley and with all three he had been the best player in the game, though with a variety of different methods. He would never be seen in practise without one or other monitoring his every shot.

Only one other golfer in modern times has remodelled his swing and come out a better player, and that was Nick Faldo. For some 10 years Nick had the strength of mind to take his man-made golf game to the biggest arenas and make it work; and six majors was his reward. After that the one element he couldn’t replace wore out; the brain could no longer make each part of the body do exactly what he wanted. Competitively, he went downhill.

By 2010 Woods had been playing with someone else’s swing for 15 years. He, like Faldo, had taken one method after another and made it work; 14 times in a dozen years he had walked away with the biggest prize. Now the days of "making it work" were gone; the ability to play golf the way you and your coach wanted was slipping away.

He still won tournaments, no less than five in 2013 alone, just not the ones he wanted. Victory in the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational that year should have been the perfect preamble to start the big haul again, yet in the following week’s USPGA he never showed. Perhaps even he then began to suspect the gift of genius had moved elsewhere, possibly for ever.