Liguori: As Longtime Sports Stars Keep Shining, Tiger's Game Is MIA
By Ann Liguori
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Last weekend, two superstars in their respective sports -- Serena Williams and Tom Brady -- grabbed the spotlight once again with performances we've come to expect from both.
Williams, at 33 years of age, won her sixth Australian Open title with a straight sets win over Maria Sharapova, earning her 19th major singles title.
Brady, 37, rallied his team from a 10-point deficit en route to a 28-24 win over Seattle in Super Bowl XLIX. He threw four touchdown passes to win his fourth Lombardi Trophy and third Super Bowl MVP.
Meanwhile, Tiger Woods -- a star who transcended all others for a long period of time while earning 14 major titles -- shot a career-worst 82 last Friday at the Phoenix Open and made headlines for the wrong reasons: unbelievably poor play.
I'm not picking on Tiger. It's just that the sports world has come to expect so much more from the golfer who dominated his sport for so long. He's won 79 career PGA titles, he at one point had the best short game on the planet and he's as mentally tough as they come. But his wedge play in his last two tournaments has been abysmal and painful to watch, with chunks and scalds -- unmentionables in golf lingo.
His short-game struggles were first witnessed by the golf world this past December at the Hero World Challenge at Isleworth, his first tournament back since missing the cut at the PGA Championship last August. Most figured it was plain rustiness, as Tiger had finally come back after taking time off to recuperate from back injuries. (Tiger missed last year's Masters for the first time ever, undergoing a microdiscectomy for a pinched nerve after suffering lower back pain and spasms.) Tiger only played in seven events in 2014.
But after watching him continue to flub wedge shots at the Phoenix Open, who knows when Tiger's confidence will return in a sport where one's mental game has to be as flawless as one's technique?
The good news is that it looks like his back pain and injuries have subsided -- for now.
It could just be that -- with all the injuries he's endured and all the coaching and swing changes he's made through the years -- right now, mentally, he is a confused mess. Once the confidence goes, it doesn't matter how many titles you've earned or how many records you've set. Your mind can play nasty tricks.
This week Tiger is back at Torrey Pines, where he has won eight times. But he'll start Thursday's first round ranked 56th in the world, and he will need to play into the top 50 by the end of February to qualify for the World Golf Championships tournament at Doral.
Let's hope that Tiger can get his confidence back. The days when he once intimidated the rest of the field are long over, but eventually he's got to regain some of the technique and confidence that he had as recently as 2013, when he won five of the 16 tournaments he played in.
"I think that Tiger's going to have the last laugh," Phil Mickelson said on Wednesday, speaking from the Farmers Insurance Open in San Diego.
Maybe he'll be right.
After all, Serena Williams and Tom Brady are certainly having the last laugh.
