Elling: Major course correction - Tiger's majors mission now becomes improbable

It was, by the length of a nine-course meal, the funniest line of the week.
Maybe a tad prescient, too.
One of Tiger Woods' oldest friends and confidants, a guy who once lived a hundred yards down the same street and served as his professional mentor, was explaining how the fading former world No. 1 seemed to finally be in a happy place emotionally. So much so that Woods did the unthinkable over dinner on the eve of the Players Championship.
He pried open his wallet, reached between the cobwebs, pulled out some plastic and picked up the check.

Tiger Woods probably won't be displacing Jack Nicklaus and Sam Snead atop the majors list after all. (Getty Images)

"It's not often he goes to the hip," Mark O'Meara cracked, drawing huge laughs.
The lone Woods tipping point of the week, it wasn't.
After nine holes, Woods handed a scorecard to his playing partners and withdrew, the numerical tab having grown to 42 strokes. Even with Woods' substantial assets, both physically and financially, it added up to a hugely disappointing sum.
For the first time, after 20 months on the fence as Woods' cataclysmic career trajectory and personal life have morphed into the stuff of morbid curiosity, it's at last become clear that he's too beaten down, too beaten up and just plain too easy to beat.
For many of us on the fence regarding his future, it became jarringly clear last week that Woods is never going to break the decades-old records of Jack Nicklaus or Sam Snead.
By any definition of the word, Woods has pulled up, lame. Fate has wrecked what we once considered a fait accompli.
Some will find an immediate sense of satisfaction and comfort in that sentiment, in that the game's monumental marks for total victories and Grand Slam wins are safe from his pillaging. On this end, it's more akin to gradual resignation. He first lost his moral compass and reputation -- now his golf game and health are both pointed due south. What's left? It didn't sneak up on anybody, really. It's just that the preponderance of evidence hit home as Woods ponderously walked the TPC Sawgrass course last week, trailing 100 yards behind his ambulatory playing partners. How can he run when he can't even walk, or when, in each of his last two starts, he's injured himself hitting mundane golf shots?
He bandages his knee as we bandy about the increasingly reasonable questions about his future, especially after Woods noted on his website Monday that he likely won't play again until the U.S. Open next month. By then, he will have completed 16 stroke-play rounds in 5 1/2 months of PGA Tour play -- or roughly three per month.
Most guys show up for the Open, the toughest test in golf, feeling ready, willing and able. Woods is 1-for-3 and it's clearly time to ask how much that'll change. As one surgeon told the New York Times, when you have had four surgeries in the affected area, there's no such thing as a minor strain. His Achilles injuries are the result of wear and tear, not a particular injury, Woods said. His ankles hurt. He tweaked a calf muscle.
Used to be, Woods didn't say much about his injuries. Now he's as rusty as a '72 Ford Pinto and parts are falling off. Odds are pretty good he's not jaking it, either. His ex-swing coach, Butch Harmon, is a former military man and says Woods is the toughest player he's ever coached.
"Tiger Woods has a higher pain threshold than any player I have ever known," Harmon said two weeks ago in Charlotte, N.C. "He'd have calf injuries, sprains, whatever, and he would never even limp. People would have no idea."
We do now. If he's addressing his maladies publicly, that says plenty about how much he's hurting, not to mention underscores that he no longer can hide the totality of his injuries anymore.
Three years is a long time in any sport, but it seems like only yesterday that the prognosticators weren't just envisioning Nicklaus and Snead getting passed, but eyeballing their extinction dates. It wasn't a matter of whether Woods would break the mark for most major wins, 18, but a question of when.
I predicted that he'd catch Nicklaus by the end of 2010, since majors were played at Pebble Beach and St. Andrews last year, sites where he had piled up multiple Grand Slam titles by whopping margins. It didn't remotely seem like a stretch given his conversion rate at the time.
Then he had knee reconstruction. Then he had marriage deconstruction. He hasn't won a major since the 2008 U.S. Open. In fact, I bet a writer from ESPN a few shillings the other day that the next eight majors will be won by eight different players and probably should have added a side wager that none will be named Eldrick. There are 35 rookies on tour this season and two of them have already won. With every passing week that players finish ahead of Woods, whatever is left of his juju erodes further. Nobody faints at the sight of his shadow anymore and as Woods seemingly gets older by the minute at a creaky 35, the tour keeps getting younger.
It's been like watching a soap opera or Oprah, with each day between the ropes seemingly offering another dizzying development. When Woods wrecked his public persona in the scandal, not a soul envisioned the performance issues it would indirectly create for the player. A year ago, Woods wanted everybody to stop talking about his personal life and concentrate on his golf. Now it's a tossup as to which is in sorrier state.
This isn't just about his execution, either. His image has been sullied to the point where he remains, in the marketing world, practically toxic. No need recapping the damaging personal fare, but now he's not winning, either. When was the last time you spotted him in an advertisement, other than as part of an ensemble cast in a Nike spot? In other words, corporate America quite literally isn't buying the notion that Woods is poised for a comeback, either personally or professionally.
Now, neither am I. By the time Woods next figures to play, it will have been 21 months since he won on the PGA Tour. His best finish in that stretch is T4. That new golf swing and jittery putting stroke aren't getting any better while he's sitting on his sofa eating Froot Loops.
Let's be clear: Woods will still pick off a few victories, and perhaps a couple of majors along the way. But he needs four to tie Nicklaus, which as has been pointed out numerous times, is the exact number amassed over the two-decade career by the game's second-best player in that span, Phil Mickelson.
The tour is wisely positioned to continue without Woods as its major marquee man. Nobody in Ponte Vedra Beach is writing him off and his boon to the TV ratings remains inarguable, but if you've seen the PGA Tour's series of 2011 promotional ads juxtaposing young players against the established guard like Woods, it's pretty clear that the new wave is being tossed on our plate for public consumption.
"The idea of the young guys challenging the established stars, I think, is something that's a positive thing," Commissioner Tim Finchem said Sunday. "The other thing is Tiger has been finishing well in advance of finish time this year, and our television ratings are up virtually across the board."
Translated: Tiger isn't in the afternoon TV window, which means that even when he is playing, he often isn't in contention.
"There's a number of reasons for that [ratings data], but one of them is clearly the fans are engaging with and focusing on these other players, and that's good news for the future," Finchem said.
Maybe you guys figured it out first. Most of us inside the traveling tour circus learned long ago that dismissing Woods usually just made him mad, which led to more than a few dismissive news dispatches being eaten by their authors.
In that regard, if this column turns out to be dead wrong, and Woods somehow catches Nicklaus and Snead, I'll print out the story, douse it in Tabasco, and eat the words.
I'll pay that tab myself.
extracted from cbssports.com