Tiger Woods, the Ryder Cup and Why He Should Still Compete

After Tiger Woods bombed at Firestone last week, shooting a 77 on Sunday to conclude a miserable 18-over-par weekend that stoked the “Tiger’s done!” calls, the hounds hit their keyboards and the airwaves.

Write him off, it’s over. No way he’s even going to make the cut at the PGA. And forget about the Ryder Cup. He stinks, he’s not one of the U.S.’s 12 best guys. He can’t win anymore.

Any of you who share those same feelings, you may be right. Maybe. Tiger Woods may never win another Major; he may win a couple Bob Hope’s and call it a career. Fact is, none of us know for sure. So I’m not saying you’re wrong; I’m just saying it’s shortsighted.

We all know Woods is playing the worst golf of his career right now, and it’s not all that surprising. Tiger is the only one who is surprised, and he’s not even surprised at the outcome, just the timing.

“To be honest with you, I thought I would have been playing poorly a little bit sooner, with all that’s going on,” Woods said Tuesday from Whistling Straits, the site of this week’s PGA Championship. “But somehow I’ve been able to play a little better than I thought for a stretch, and then it finally caught up with me last week.”

Last week didn’t start all this commotion, but it sure blew the lid off it. I found it quite ironic that some purveyors of opinion took Tiger’s worst career event—the Firestone collapse—and used that as the defining reason as to why Ryder Cup captain Corey Pavin shouldn’t make Woods a captain’s choice if he doesn’t qualify on his own.

“Hopefully, I won’t be a [captain’s] pick,” Woods said. “I would like to be able to play myself onto that team.”

Woods currently sits 10th on the Ryder Cup rankings. He needs to catch Dustin Johnson and Lucas Glover to earn his way onto the team.

But Woods also confirmed that he would accept the roster spot if Pavin chose him as one of his four selections. Pavin will announce his selections on Sept. 7, and it would behoove him to choose Woods.

If you honestly don’t think Woods currently has the skill to help the Ryder Cup team win, then just say so. That’s fine. Nobody will harp on you for that.

But don’t take the easy way out—like many are doing—and label Woods as unfit to compete and then cite his personal turmoil and his collapse at Firestone for your reasoning.

The “Tiger is down and he may never get back up” column is more outdated than a boom box.

First off, comparing Tiger’s recent tournaments to the Ryder Cup is irrelevant, as they are completely different events. The biggest advantage Tiger has is that the Ryder Cup is a match play event, not stroke play like Firestone.

What has Woods done in match play events throughout his career? Yeah, as you might guess, the numbers are pretty stellar.

Woods is 3-1-1 lifetime in solo Ryder cup matches. Woods did not play the last Cup in 2008 because he was recuperating from knee surgery.

The WGC-Accenture Match Play Championship, the PGA Tour’s most heralded and demanding match play tournament? Woods has a 32-7 career record there.

The dominance started before he turned pro. As an amateur, Woods held a match play record of 43-3 in USGA events.

So when the Cup heads to Celtic Manor on Oct. 1, Woods doesn’t need to shoot 64 to win his match. He just needs to survive. Match play is a game against par. Whoever can bend the most without breaking, and whoever can turn a couple inevitable bogeys into pars, is the one who wins.

Tiger can hit six shots out of bounds on one hole, and it’s just one hole. It doesn’t put him out of the race. That should give him comfort, as he knows all he needs to do is hang tough, stick with his swing, and he’ll be right there. Knowing that a double bogey doesn’t put him out of contention should be a relief for Tiger.

Yeah, right, nice stats buddy, but that was a different Tiger. This isn’t the same guy. He doesn’t have the same game, and his mind is like leftover scraps of beef stew that have been poured down the garbage disposal and churned to pieces. There is no consistency and no way he could “bend but not break.” He’s already broken.

It’s that little devil of a voice that feeds the 24/7 speculation cycle. But really, the problem isn’t that there are people who honestly believe Tiger will never be the same guy again, that he’s now relegated to mediocre golf for the rest of his career. Those folks aren’t a problem at all.

The problem is that too many of us think we always have the answers. We are a sports society that latches onto a news story, positive or negative, and quickly deems it an absolute.

We label Stephen Strasburg, poor kid, the greatest pitcher ever before he even makes five starts in the Big Leagues. Then when he comes up with a little shoulder stiffness, we act like his career is in jeopardy and the Washington Nationals are about to ruin him. Both are complete overreactions.

It’s not a surprise that we have handled Tiger Woods the same way. He’s the year’s biggest sports story.

Woods has played absurdly bad golf in 2010, for his standards. We see this as fact. So it wouldn’t surprise anybody if he crashed at the PGA this week and then got swept off the course at the Ryder Cup by some Irishman—if Tiger is even part of the event.

But we also know that Woods has had great Ryder Cup success and great match play success.

Maybe Woods is more lightning-in-a-bottle than sure thing as we speak, but the upside still highly outweighs any risk.

Tiger Woods could still be the best player on the Ryder Cup team. Or he could not. I don’t know, and you don’t know.

Which is why he ought to be part of Pavin’s squad and teeing it up at Celtic Manor come October.

Follow Teddy Mitrosilis on Twitter. You can reach him at [e-mail].