What Does the Future Hold for Tiger Woods?

As Tiger Woods continues to struggle with his game the hands of time continue to close in on him, people seem to have two views on how the remainder of his career will play out.

On one side we have the optimists who seem to chalk Woods’ recent struggles up to personal issues, swing changes, injuries, confidence issues, etc.

The optimists all seem to think that Woods will somehow come through this dark period in his career and once again dominate the game of golf for at least a period of time.

On the other side of the coin, we have the doom and gloom types who believe Woods is done, that he’ll never win another major championship again.

A view that few seem to be taking, however, is that at the age of 36, Woods may simply be a great golfer on the decline.

It’s happened to every great golfer that has come before him and will undoubtedly happen to every great golfer that comes after him.

A golfer’s true prime typically lasts somewhere in the vicinity of 10-12 years.

Sam Snead, despite winning 82 PGA Tour events over the course of 30 years, won 62 percent of his of his standard PGA Tour events and 86 percent of his major championships during a 12-year stretch between 1940 and 1952.

Ben Hogan won all nine of his majors and 83 percent of his PGA Tour events between 1943 and 1953.

During a 10-year stretch between 1958 and 1968, Arnold Palmer 96 percent of his tournaments and all seven of his majors.

Tom Watson won seven out of his eight majors and 87 percent of his total tournaments between 1977 and 1987.

Between 1920 and 1930, Walter Hagen won 83 percent of his majors and 70 percent of his career titles.

Moving ahead to more modern times, Seve Ballesteros won all five of his majors and 73 percent of his total career wins between 1978 and 1988.

Greg Norman won both of his majors and nearly 70 percent of his total wins between 1985 and 1995.

And then we come to Jack Nicklaus, who is widely regarded as the greatest golfer of all time.  

Many believe that Nicklaus’ prime stretched more than 20 years due to his victory at the 1986 Masters at the age of 46, but that was not the case.

In fact, Nicklaus won 72 percent of his majors and 78 percent of his PGA Tour titles during a 12-year stretch between 1963 and 1975.

After 1975, Nicklaus still won; his success just became far more sporadic.

The one notable exception to this rule was Gary Player.

Player only won 56% of his majors during his best 12 year stretch as a professional golfer. Player also won tournaments around the world for more than 20 years.

That being said, Player was never quite as dominant as the likes of Snead, Hogan, Hagen and Nicklaus.

Many of Player's career wins also came on the South African Tour (now the Sunshine Tour) and the PGA Tour of Australia, which were against a lower level of competition than the likes of Nicklaus, Snead, Hogan, Watson, etc. would have faced on a weekly basis.

Woods completely dominated the PGA Tour between 1996 and 2008, which is a span of 13 years.

Had he not undergone reconstructive knee surgery in 2008 followed by personal issues which disrupted his 2010 season and injuries and swing changes which hampered his 2011 season, Woods would have likely added to his totals of PGA Tour and major championship victories and would have extended his reign of domination to 15 years.

15 years of essentially dominating professional golf is longer than any great player who has ever come before Woods.

So, just how long do we expect Woods’ dominant stretch to continue?

Do we really expect him to go another three-to-four year hot streak similar to what we saw in 1999-2001 or 2005-2009?

History suggests that is unlikely to happen.

If you refer to history as a guide to the future, what we are likely to see out of Woods over the course of the next four-to-five years is, at best, something similar to Nicklaus’ career path between 1976 and the early 1980s.

Woods will win, and he may even win multiple majors.

But his success will become far more infrequent. We are likely to see Woods miss cuts and finish out of contention just as often as we’ll see him content for titles.  

Every great athlete begins to decline at some point in their career, and Woods will be no different.

If history is anything to go by, Woods will neither regain his dominant form nor simply fall of the face of the earth and never win again.

Woods will enter a slow, steady decline, which may or may not contain some big-time wins along the way.

That’s the way it’s been for every great golfer throughout history, and at the end of the day, as talented as Woods is, he’s still just another great golfer who will be unable to escape the tightening grasp of father time.      

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