Vulnerable? Uncertain? Has Tiger Woods Simply Lost All Confidence?

Tiger Woods may have fooled Jesper Parnevik but he couldn’t fool the most important observer of his game.

Himself.

When Tiger Woods withdrew unexpectedly on Monday from the Safeway Championship, he sent out shock waves that registered about an eight on the golf richter scale.  The aftershock was felt not only throughout Northern California but the entire golf world.

We read words like “vulnerable” coming from Tiger Woods.

Vulnerable?

And here Jesper Parnevik was telling anyone who would listen that Tiger Woods was hitting the golf ball better than ever, he had that old Tiger trajectory and distance and that he was simply “flushing it.”

There’s only one problem.

Jesper Parnevik is not a mind reader.

He could not look into what has to be a very fragile Tiger Woods psyche and see that there is an emotion in Woods that we haven’t seen before.

Tiger Woods is afraid.  There is fear, fear of the unknown.

There has never been an ounce of fear in Woods — until now.

Age and three back surgeries will do that to the best of athletes and Woods is no exception.

Time is undefeated, Tiger Woods is not.

Woods’ WD from Safeway shows his level of uncertainty.  Same for the fact that he also withdrew from the Turkish Airlines Open on the European Tour which isn’t until the week of Nov. 3.  So something’s going on inside Woods’ head.  If we are to believe it when he tells us he’s strong and healthy, then something else is wrong here.

What has made Woods so extraordinary during his fabulous career was his mental edge.  No one could touch him, he had the aura of invincibility.

Now he admits his game is simply “vulnerable.”  Welcome to the Real World, Tiger Woods.

Vulnerable is a fact of life in every sport.  It is what every athlete has to deal with sooner or later.  Woods was fortunate that it came “later” in his career.

Perhaps the real reason Tiger Woods withdrew from the Safeway is that he knows deep down inside that he cannot be “that” Tiger Woods anymore.  He can’t be that guy.  You know, the one who can produce birdies at will, the guy who can bury the rest of the field, the guy who won 14 major championships.

No, Tiger Woods is no longer the Tiger Woods of 2000.  The past is past and it is time to move on to the New World Golf Order and Tiger Woods is not a part of that.  He’s not a part of it as far as majors, World Golf Championships, all the stuff that counts.

Hard as it is, Tiger’s just another guy out there with his name on his golf bag, albeit a name that still draws crowds.  But the crowds that will show will come out of curiosity more than anything else.  What’s left in his tank?  How much gas?

The sad fact is that Tiger Woods may be closer to retirement than ever before.

This is surely the beginning of the end.

The problem is, how does Tiger handle it?  How does he handle being a “field player?”

Is he good enough to win again?  There’s a bunch of experts telling us he can but like Jesper Parnevik, they are not mind readers.

And the one certainty is that the mind of Tiger Woods has to be very uncertain.  Welcome to the reality of the 786th-ranked players in the world.

And that’s unexplored territory for the man who spent 683 weeks of his golfing life as the best in the world.