Tiger Woods Has Become the PGA Tour's New 'Devil Ball'

Tiger Woods may be ready to claim a new, old nickname on the PGA Tour.

Just call him "Devil Ball."

But you see, Tiger is not the first "Devil Ball" on the PGA Tour.

We must digress, back to the late 70s, there was a tour player who looked so very, very awesome on the practice tee. Kinda, sorta the way we hear John Cook raving about how well Tiger "clicked" a couple of Mondays ago at Isleworth, everything was great, spectacular, flawless.

Same way with this particular tour player. Alas, he suffered from an ailment that led the tour caddies to nickname him "Devil Ball."

You see, Devil Ball would be out there in the first, second or third rounds, perhaps even the fourth, he'd be cruising, looking like a world beater, three-under after five holes, four-under through eight. Then suddenly, without warning, IT, would appear, in this case, IT being the Devil Ball. The Devil Ball could start right or left and then go even farther right or left and as one veteran caddy explained, "only the devil knew where it would end up."

Thus, Devil Ball was born.

32 years later, there's a new Devil Ball, aka Tiger Woods. Tiger was looking for all intents and purposes late Wednesday afternoon at Dove Mountain like he would make one of those signature Tiger Woods comebacks in match play, the sort that won him three U.S. Amateurs, which is truly one of his most remarkable feats to date.

He holed that clutch putt at the final hole and surely a lot of you out there were thinking to yourselves, "He's back!"

Then, without warning, there IT was on the first tee, the 19th hole, sudden-death with Thomas Bjorn.

The Devil Ball started right and entwined itself amongst the desert thorns.

Did anyone see the irony of it all? There was Tiger Woods, surrounded by thorny bushes, getting stuck over and over as he tried to find a way to extract the Devil Ball. It was a mirror image of his life, a life that has been stuck in the thorny bushes, stabbing him, annoying him, taking him to the brink.

It took two swings for the extraction, a fourth shot on the green, the fifth a miss from 25-feet and it took Woods about a second to remove his cap.

He was done.

He's had the dip to contend with for many years. Now he has the anemic short game, by his standards.

How he's got the worst of all:

The Devil Ball.

The agony of the Devil Ball is that it sits, waiting, dormant, you never know when it's going to strike.

And that's what Woods must now contend with.