I Am Tiger Woods, Now

Some kid would stare at the camera in what he or she thought was a Tiger-esque stare and say, "I am Tiger Woods."

Then they'd whack a ball off the tee.

No one was Tiger Woods then, but we all are Tiger Woods now.

Just like the rest of us, Tiger can do nothing right on a golf course.

Nothing.

If he doesn't shank the drive, he pulls the iron. If he gets one of the preceding two right, he leaves his putt short...when he's not yanking it 18 inches to one side.

We've all played with this guy. Some of us ARE this guy. He'll hit one majestic, soaring drive that splits a fairway right down the middle. He'll knock a 6-iron stiff or show the touch of a maestro with a 7. He won't just take the right read on a tricky, left-to-right downhill putt with a water hazard looming, he'll take the ONLY read, and the rest of us are lost in admiration as he jugs a 20-footer.

That, by the way, is as many pretty shots as you'll see from him all day. The other 14 holes, he's either taking a drop, or playing off the fairway behind the trees to either side (pick your slice or hook), or three-putting from 10 feet out.

That, by the way, is Tiger Woods.

Tiger Woods now.

At the recent Firestone, Woods shot over par for every round. I don't care what his actual score was, because Tiger Freakin' Woods just shot over par for every round.

For the record, I can shoot over par for every round...and I usually do.

For the record, ALL OF US can shoot over par for every round...and we usually do.

It doesn't take anything special to shoot over par, except a marked lack of desire to do better.

All of us could be better golfers, except that golf requires real concentration. There are just too many moving parts to get as much as a finger wrong. Every one of us, as soon as we swing, knows exactly what we did wrong as our ball goes everywhere else but where we intended.

"Hooked it."

"Topped it off the tee."

"Pulled my head."

"Might as well have been killing snakes with that last one."

"Flew the green."

I could go on, but we all know the words to this song because we sing it every time we're on a golf course. For that one time when the stars and planets align and we spank a perfect fairway wood over the water hazard to within six feet of the pin, there are a hundred shots on the same course, in the same round, where failure to pay attention to that one, nagging detail was the difference between carding a 3 on a par 4 and a 10 on a par 4.

We don't burn to make every shot perfect.

Neither does Tiger Woods.

Not anymore.

He used to burn to make every shot perfect. 12th century flagellates were kinder to themselves than Woods was on a practice tee. He practiced for Augusta by putting on a basketball court (hard to get much faster than that). He routinely punished buckets of range balls long after even the most eager sponsor's exemption had retired for a beer. He was never out of shape. He pushed himself through the kind of injuries that would make most of us take time off work; really, if your knee is bad enough that you can barely stand on it, you're not playing golf on it.

Woods won his last major doing exactly that.

Now?

Quite simply, his head is anywhere but on a golf course, and it shows. He might as well be playing with Phil Mickelson's clubs. His personal life is in shambles, his reputation a smoking ruin, and, predictably, his game has followed.

When it seemed like he could do no wrong off the course, he could do no wrong on the course. It was almost as though all those victories, all those majors, and all that endorsement money somehow validated his lifestyle. He has since come to find out that that isn't true, of course, that your sin will find you out.

The upshot of his personal drama is that his mind, once his greatest weapon, is now his worst enemy.

Poker players call it "going on tilt." A bad read leads to a bad call or a worse raise, and suddenly chips aren't just leaking from your hand anymore, they're hemorrhaging.

Baseball players call it a "slump." You haven't made solid contact in almost a week. Everything is a dribbler to short, a come-backer to the pitcher, a fly ball that the center fielder didn't have to move to catch. You take strikes on pitches in your wheelhouse and you swing at pitches bouncing to the plate.

The rest of us just call it normal.

For mere mortals, the above is the story of our lives. This is the stuff we do in our beer league softball games, at our Friday night poker games, on our Sunday morning rounds at our buddy's dad's private club.

Suddenly, this is Tiger Woods.

Utterly bereft of his awesome gifts.

Mortal.

Tiger Woods is the rest of us, now.

What's stunning is the speed of his fall. We could see Darryl Strawberry wasting his gifts. We knew it was only a matter of time before Mike Tyson went from being the most feared man on the planet to a punchline and a cautionary tale. Normally, for one to fall from Olympus takes years, not weeks.

Leave it to Tiger to fail more spectacularly than anyone before him.