Tiger Woods: When Will His Killer Instinct Return?

Kathy Bissell

Watching Tiger Woods struggle on the golf course in 2010 wasn’t much fun for his fans, although his competitors had to have secretly enjoyed it.  After 15 years of running over his fellow golfers, this year, as the saying goes, he was the bug, not the windshield.  

Since 1996, when he turned professional and won two events in less than two months of play, Woods has not had a winless year until now.  He is 0 for every tournament in 2010 to date. He is 0 for the PGA Tour in 2010. 

He still has a shot at the Sheshan International Golf Club in Shanghai, the first week of November, and at his own tournament, the Chevron World Challenge, but neither of those are PGA Tour events.

The saving grace is that he doesn’t have to hear from PGA Tour Commissioner Tim Finchem that he’s not at the SBS Championship in Hawaii.  For the first time in his career, he didn’t qualify. 

While Woods’ fans are wringing their hands, they shouldn’t worry.  Tiger Woods always has a plan, a strategy, a way to add to his victory total because that’s what drives him.

“Last year I won what six times in the year, I think, and I didn't win a Major Championship. So that's what separates, I think, a really good year from a great year is you've got to win one of the big ones,” he said at the PGA Championship.  He hasn’t forgotten that he wants to play good golf, and he hasn’t forgotten how.

To recap, Woods has 71 PGA Tour titles and 14 majors.  Only two golfers are ahead of him in victories on the PGA Tour – Jack Nicklaus (73) and Sam Snead (82).  One is ahead of him in major championships and we all know who that is.

(Jack Nicklaus, 18, for those who have been asleep for the last three decades. Or as we in Ponte Vedra like to say, it’s really 21 since Jack won The Players three times, and we like to count that. And that gives Tiger Woods 15, not 14.)

If anyone thinks Tiger Woods is going to get that close to breaking records and quit or get sloppy or stop trying, he or she is crazy.

However, Woods made it difficult on himself in the major category by losing the 2010 season which everyone thought was his best chance to get to 17 in a hurry – Augusta National, Pebble Beach, St. Andrews,...and coast smoothly into new territory and enter the 20+ major category, sometime in the next five years.   

Woods’ name was practically inscribed on three major trophies at the end of the 2009 season. Then, of course, it wasn’t to be. 

But as Woods himself has pointed out, he’s had bad patches before.

“I've had moments where I didn't hit the ball very good coming in (to a tournament), and you've got to turn it around,” he said in the spring. “That's the whole idea of practicing and really working on being focused on what I'm doing and being committed to what I'm doing.  I know what the fix is, and I've proven it to myself, and it's just a matter of going out there and executing it consistently over 72 holes.”

A few months after that explanation, he was beginning to work with a new swing guru, Sean Foley, creating what he hoped would be a fix for his game. At the first Fed Ex Playoff event, though, he insisted he had not changed his swing.

“I still haven't officially done it yet,” Woods said at Barclays.  “This would be the fourth time I changed my golf swing since I've been on the PGA Tour, and I did some with Butch and with Hank and this would be my fourth one with Sean.

"So it's an undertaking that I have to wrap my head around because it's going to take some time.” 

But a week later, he was getting more comfortable with the idea and discussed the three teachers.

“They're three different philosophies, three different ways to hit a golf ball,” Woods explained. “I went through two changes with Butch, a swing change again with Hank and now with Sean.

"There's a lot of learning to different philosophies, and that's probably the biggest thing is you first have to understand the philosophy in order to buy into it and then be committed to it.”

Now there are those who thought Woods should have stayed with Butch Harmon, because he won eight majors under Harmon’s eye. Going to Hank Haney, who taught Mark O’Meara, Woods won another six.

There were two years between the changes without any majors, 2003 and 2004.  We’ve already seen a majorless 2009 and 2010.  It’s doubtful Woods will let that bleed very far into 2011.

It might take another four or five or six months, but count on Tiger Woods to make the adjustments he needs to make. 

When he tees it up next year, which will either be at the Accenture Match Play or whatever tournament is played at Doral or Bay Hill, he will be there to win as he always is.

“I go out there and tee it up to win the tournament and do everything I possibly can mentally and physically to win the golf tournament,” Woods has said any number of times.    

Woods’ next serious plateau will surely come when he gets to the 19th major and the 83rd tournament title because only he can decide how much he wants to make history instead of chasing it.  

When you reach the top of Mr. Everest, where do you go from there?