Tiger Woods Won't Overcome Recent Players Championship Struggles

TPC Sawgrass, the home of The Players Championship, is not a good course for Tiger Woods. While Tiger has been brilliant this year, his game still does not suggest success at this challenging stadium course. 

Tiger's struggles with this track have led to a string of disappointing finishes. Since 2001, Woods has just one top-10 finish here. 

He was 40th here last year at one-under, while he was forced to withdraw the two previous years.

He does not have a host of good memories here, and the good ones that do exist are from a time that is long gone. 

In 2000, Woods was second, and he picked up his only victory in this event the following year. That was back when this tournament was played at the end of March. That was also when Tiger was winning everything, as he was in the midst of the greatest stretch of golf the world has ever seen. 

His 2001 victory came right before he completed the Tiger Slam by winning the Masters. 

Even then, he would've still been tied for the lead at the end of the final round were it not for this remarkable putt on the iconic island green 17th hole: 

The reason that stretch of golf goes above and beyond what he has been able to do at other times in his remarkable career is because he was driving the ball with accuracy. 

In 2000, he hit 71.2 percent of his fairways (all stats via PGATour.com). This misses his best career mark for accuracy off the tee by a tenth, which he set the previous year.  

It's been a fairly steady decline in the driving-accuracy department ever since.

So, while he has been in great form this year winning three of his six Tour events, he is hitting just 55.7 percent of his fairways. That is 154th on the Tour.

This has been the source for the majority of Tiger's problems at Sawgrass.

Sawgrass is a course that will punish inaccuracy off the tee. There is water everywhere, and the rough is tough to get out of.

This year, Tiger has made up for his inaccuracy off the tee with tremendous iron play, amazing distance control with his wedge, and he leads the Tour in strokes gained putting.

These attributes will all serve him well at this tournament, but it is worth noting that Tiger's insanely hot putting stroke began to cool off during the Masters, which was his last tournament.

With the blazing-fast Bermuda grass greens of this course, his putting stroke will be tested. 

To cap off his doomed nature in this tournament is the fact that Tiger is not overly concerned with winning this event. While it is hailed as the unofficial fifth major, Tiger is only concerned about official majors.

This is not to suggest that he won't be playing to win. It just means he is not going to tweak his game or gear up his schedule to dominate at this event, and that is exactly what he would need to do to truly excel at Sawgrass. 

Tiger has shown nothing this year to suggest he will be able to consistently hit the fairways at this tight-course. This will keep him out of the top 10. The rest will ride on his putter, and if he struggles with the flat iron, he will be flirting with the cut line.