Golf: Woods hits worst round

Tiger Woods looks stunned at the Phoenix Open. Photo / AP

The fall of Tiger Woods reached its nadir yesterday, as the greatest golfer of his era missed the cut at the Phoenix Open by a country mile with an abject 82, officially his worst score in 1109 rounds as a professional.

Even by his erratic recent standards, this was a display on a par with Michael Jordan forgetting how to dunk a basketball or Tom Brady turning up for tomorrow's Super Bowl with no idea of how to play quarterback.

Only once before had Woods failed to break 80, when he hacked his way to an 81 at Muirfield in 2002. But that was into the teeth of an East Lothian gale, not on a benign course. The man himself, normally ultra-defensive, felt humiliated.

"I have to keep things in perspective," he said. "But sometimes it's difficult. We have days like this in golf. Unfortunately, mine was in a public setting."

Woods said he was heading back to Florida to put in more "reps" under the guidance of his latest swing coach, biomechanics expert Chris Como. The problem is that the partnership is not working.

One could argue that it is too early to judge, but in their three months together, Woods has finished last in his own event in Orlando and was ranked 132nd in a field of 132 as he beat his retreat from Arizona.

At this rate, Woods is poised to fall out of the world's top 50 on Monday and might not even be eligible for the first World Golf Championship of the year, at Doral in March.

To see the man who won the Masters by 12 shots at 21, who has amassed 14 majors and 79 tour titles, suffering such indignities is not an edifying experience.

The impression is that ever since he parted company with Hank Haney in 2010, he has been too inclined to indulge pseudo-science rather than to restore the fundamentals of what made his game great.

"I was caught right between patterns - the old one and the new one," said Woods, whose front nine of 44 was tied with his worst ever. "I just have to keep fighting, keep grinding."

Brandel Chamblee, the US golf analyst notorious for calling Woods "duplicitous" in 2012, described Woods' first round - an error-strewn 73 - as the "most shocking round I have seen Tiger play".

He would have needed smelling salts after this. "The word is incomprehensible," he said.

In his chipping, an area where he claimed to have made improvements, Woods appeared to have a psychological block so severe it could only be called the yips. His short game has become wretched. He looks paralysed by doubt. In a greenside bunker by the fourth yesterday, he skulled the ball across the green like a 21-handicapper.

The wonder is that it has all gone so dreadfully wrong so quickly. Not 18 months ago, Woods was ranked No1 in the world.

About 120,000 people had swarmed in to see him, and his efforts had sunk before lunch. He merely proved that, while his tooth had been replaced, courtesy of emergency dental work after his bizarre ski episode, his game had gone. The Daily Telegraph