This week’s column for Sympatico on Tiger Woods’ continued slide is now live:
Imagine Tiger Woods ranked 50th in the world. It’s easier than you might initially think.
After a disastrous PGA Championship, and an average WGC Bridgestone event the previous week, Woods, for the first time in his career, really doesn’t have a place to play. His lacklustre golf, coupled with an injury to his Achilles tendon, meant he had to come up with brilliance out of the gate to have any hope of competing in the PGA Tour’s four tournament playoff that kicks off next week at the Barclays. But his 10-over par total through the first two days of last week’s PGA Championship led to a missed cut – the first time he’s ever failed to play the weekend in golf’s fourth major of the year.The PGA Tour created the FedEx Cup and resulting playoff as an attempt – at least partially – to get Woods and his fellow stars to play more frequently after the PGA Championship. But after two days of lousy driving, Woods finds himself on the outside looking in, 129th on the FedEx Cup standings and without an invite to four of the top tournaments on the tour. He could have still played his way in this week in Greensboro, but chose not to, saying a family commitment kept him from the tournament.
Where does this leave Woods? He keeps talking about needing “reps” – his take on tipping it up in a few more tournaments – but where will those come from. He could – horror of horrors – play some of the PGA Tour’s lesser “fall finish” events, the tournaments usually relegated to those trying to hold onto their playing privileges for the following year. But that sounds unlikely, even though Woods’ agent, Mark Steinberg, said he wasn’t sure what the next step for the golfer would be.
So it is off to the doctor – in this case Woods’ Canadian swing doctor Sean Foley – who will continue to prescribe two-a-days of practices flighting the ball, with a side dose of stack and tilt.
A bestselling author and award-winning columnist, Robert Thompson has been writing about business and sports, and particularly golf, for almost two decades. His reporting and commentary on golf has appeared in 
tiger should go play some european tour events, still very good competition, but easier greens to put on mostly, to build up some confidence/rankings. Then come back and compete in a few fall series events. Try to get as he calls them “w” under his belt, then again build from there.
It’s hard to say if foley has hurt tiger yet imo, because he has not had even a full year of practice with tiger yet with all of the injuries. I believe once a full year of practice the amount tiger used to practice you will start to see his rise of dominance begin again.
Tiger is working on the one prize left for him, the 2012 Ben Hogan award.
G – how long should one expect it to take for the world’s #1 golf talent to find Himself again? With his team, it could take forever. or never. But I think he has the potential to go it alone, and win again. He misunderstood his dad’s last wish “Tiger, surround yourself with a great posse”.