Golf: Woods' Open failure all too familiar

Tiger Woods shakes hands with his old caddie, Steve Williams, after the Open. Photo / AP

They were already evacuating the hospitality suites by the time Tiger Woods made the long walk up the 17th. The mobile bars were being packed up and spectators were padding through the exits. Those that could were scrambling over the bank to watch Phil Mickelson. While Lefty cracked open the champagne, Woods was again left to clear up the empties.

Sixth place in a major is obviously not to be sniffed at, and Woods was at pains to point out he had again challenged on the final afternoon of the British Open.

But rarely has he played as badly as this in a situation as critical as this.

His score of 74 - three over par for the round, two over for the tournament - actually flattered him a little.

Woods was poor not just by his own standards, but by anyone's. At Augusta in 1997, he went the entire week without a single three-putt. Here, there were five - the difference between him and victory.

He blamed the Muirfield greens.

"I had a hard time adjusting to the speeds," he said. "It was frustrating. It usually gets faster as the week goes on, but this week it was different."

It was a depressingly familiar Woods, though. You could have compiled a highlights reel of his bad shots on that final day.

There was the awful, awful chip shot from the back of the ninth green that would have dismayed a club hacker. Or the par putt that slipped by on the 15th and put him out of contention for good. Had he missed that putt a decade ago, it would have drawn stunned gasps.

Here, it just brought a polite sigh. Increasingly, Woods is having to face up to the possibility that he may never win a major again.

It is easy to make snap judgments about these things, but the indisputable truth is that every major that Woods fails to win makes it less likely that he will win the next. Performances in the four major championships are how he assesses his work and the general downward trajectory of his career in that respect is becoming impossible to ignore.

Context is everything. If you were to run the career of Tiger Woods in reverse, it would be one of the great Hollywood plot lines.

After more than five years of contending for a major title, he finally breaks his duck at Torrey Pines in 2008, watched by his fabulous new model wife Elin, before going on one of the most remarkable winning streaks the sport has seen.

His career climaxes by ripping Augusta apart to win the Masters by 12 strokes, at which point he gives up the professional game.

It is not his greatness in question here, but his place in the pantheon. Whether his 14 majors trump Jack Nicklaus' 18 is debatable.

But on the measure of longevity, it is no contest: while Woods won his titles within the space of 11 years, Nicklaus' major wins spanned 24.