Tiger Woods: Conspiracy Theory, Conjecture and His Uncertain Future

Heard it all yesterday except this:

Conspiracy Theory: The real Tiger Woods is being held captive in a highly-secure, unknown location and he's been replaced by a body-double, lookalike that has diminished skills, a bum left knee and an incredibly poor short game.

Primary Proof: The impostor picked up an expensive dinner tab for Mark O'Meara on Wednesday night at Ruth Chris Steakhouse, something even O'Meara found shocking.

Okay, enough musings, but what transpired in the world of golf on Thursday at the TPC Sawgrass during the first round of the Players Championship will be talked about for the next four weeks leading up to the U.S. Open.

Tiger Woods is No .8 in the official world golf rankings, but he's still No. 1 in notoriety and the No. 1 undisputed King of Conjecture.

Woods strengthened that ranking on Thursday.

The most profound observation came late in the day after Woods had long withdrawn from the tournament, long after golf's Elvis had left the building.

Mark O'Meara, who has long been on the "inside" of a life that few see from the inside, gave what we seldom get from Woods, some honest testimony.

Went like this:

"Tiger, even as well as I know him, sometimes it's very difficult to read him, you know, and I think I know him fairly well. I asked him the other day, I said 'how's the leg' and he said 'It's fine.' I don't know if it's fine or he's just telling me it's fine and it's not really that fine."

Then, O'Meara, perhaps realizing that Woods has problems telling the truth, followed up with Sean Foley:

"I saw Sean Foley out there and I asked him and he's like: 'You know, his leg is not good.'"

Now keep in mind, this is not a writer doing the investigation. Those who demand an insider, someone who knows Woods, someone who has played golf at an elite level, well, you've got him.

Foley, who cannot keep a secret, something Woods will no doubt frown upon, also put this on the record:

"He's an athlete and he's fit but you can't overuse your body that much and not have...there's going to be some issues."

There you have the "insider testimony" now back to the conjecture portion of the show.

"He needs to shut it down and show up at the start of 2012 at the Sony." That's from the Golf Channel's Brandel Chamblee, the man Foley loves to throw rocks at.

"Right now he's scared," said Peter Jacobsen, who has endured 14 surgeries. Jake spoke for the Golf Channel, sitting in this week.

He may have hit it on the head. There's an old saying that the greatest fear is fear of the unknown and right now, there are so many unknowns in the life of Woods. Jake's right, he has to be scared.

And this observation by NBC analyst Johnny Miller:

"He has a swing he uses on the practice tee and another one he uses on the golf course. They're not the same."

Again, you demand something from someone who has played the game at an elite level, well, chew on that.

There was so much additional information overload following the quick exit by Woods.

Stuff like:

The genesis of this entire mess was a skateboard accident he had as a child.

Butch Harmon is to blame, he's the one who gave him the swing that gave him the bad knee; Hank Haney is to blame, he didn't protect the knee enough when he taught Woods.

Doctors told Woods not to bulk up his body the way he has. He would damage himself if he carried more than 175-180 pounds on his frame.

And so on and so forth.

Golf Channel's Rich Lerner called Woods "a shadow of the man he used to be."

We'd be remiss not to include eyewitness testimony to Woods' nine-hole effort on Thursday.

This was the observation from Sean Dowley, who writes for this site and was excited to see Woods in person:

"Tiger's short game looked like a 20-handicap. I'm not exaggerating, I witnessed it in person this morning (Thursday), it was atrocious. He fluffed shots, mishit 20-yard chips, elementary stuff. Needless to say, I literally couldn't believe my eyes."

There's a lot about what has transpired that is hard to believe, even O'Meara is still wondering.

"I was shocked," is how O'Meara reacted when he heard that Woods withdrew.

"I don't know if he was ready to win but I expected him to play well. I feel bad for my friend." O'Meara swapped text messages with Woods after the withdrawal.

"He's said he's just not doing so well," O'Meara shared. "Not feeling so well. Obviously it's pretty bad. He needs to get that fixed."

So much to fix, so much appears broken and now, the doubt has multiplied.

So much uncertainty swirling.

Will leave you with this from O'Meara, regarding Woods desire, his state of mind:

"Is the fire burning as bright as it once did?

"Maybe not."

And therein lies the current life and troubled times of Tiger Woods.

Too many "maybes"