Tiger Woods' Tour Championship Failure Fitting End for Legend's 2013 Season

Tiger Woods' poor Tour Championship shouldn't be a surprise. It is a fitting end consistent with his successful yet frustrating season.  

Woods entered the final leg of the FedEx Cup playoff with the points lead. After three rounds, he is tied for 26th place in a field of 30 golfers. At three-over, he is a massive 14 strokes behind leader Henrik Stenson.

For all intents and purposes, Woods is not going to win the $10 million that comes with the FedEx championship.

After entering this event with the lead and the mathematical inside track to the title, coming up short of the championship will be viewed as a letdown for Woods. And it should be.

We are talking about one of the greatest closers in the history of sports, and he is about to get throttled in a race for $10 million by Henrik Stenson—he of three career PGA wins and strip golfing. 

And this all feels about right for Woods' season. 

Woods is all but guaranteed second-place in the FedEx Cup, and he is finishing off a year where reclaimed his world No. 1 position and picked up five PGA victories. 

Make no mistake, this is a career year for almost any other golfer. 

However, with Woods not having a major title among his five victories, the season is viewed as a letdown. The perception of Woods is predicated from his dominant past, and these results don't live up to that past. 

Given the state of his game, that is no surprise, either. 

While Woods had a fantastic year, his game allowed for a smaller margin for error than it had when he was at his best. 

Woods has struggled this season with both his accuracy off the tee and his scrambling. He is ranked in the 50s in both categories. 

When he was picking up wins left and right earlier in the year, he was making up for his weaknesses with a stretch of putting that may be the best of his career. 

However, when it came to major tournaments, Woods never managed to find his best putting form, and his diminishing ball striking was obvious. 

In his glory days, Woods' game was so dialed in he could be slumping in one area of his game and still walk away with a tournament victory.

Now he needs something like great putting, which is unsustainable, to get to top of the leaderboard—which is what life is like for every other golfer on tour. 

Who can tell if Woods' glory days are permanently gone. He turned his game around this season and it would be no surprise to see him come back even stronger next year. 

But when it comes to assessing this season, his run in the FedEx Cup playoff is a fair reflection of overall form.