Tiger Woods stumbles out of Valhalla, PGA Championship

Courageous or foolish? Noble or misguided? Determined or pigheaded? You can attach a lot of adjectives to Tiger Woods and his ugly performance at the PGA Championship, but you can’t dispute this: the man playing golf right now is a faint shadow of the titan who owned the game a decade ago.

There’s really not much to say about Woods’ performance at Valhalla, a +6 stumble that didn’t even look that good. Woods made the decision to play just days after withdrawing from the WGC at Firestone, and set himself up for worlds of second-guessing. His performance this week, in which he couldn’t have driven worse if he had been blindfolded, did nothing to alleviate concerns about his health and, to some extent, his sanity.

But say this for Woods: he didn’t withdraw from this tournament, and five other guys did. Oh, it looked close; the announcers at the turn were dissecting Woods’ placement of the scorecard to divine his intentions. But Woods surely knew that withdrawing for anything short of a direct asteroid hit to the chest would have buried him in criticism. So he played on, and on, and on.

Where does Woods go from here? You’ve probably got a better chance of playing in the FedEx Cup and the Ryder Cup than he does. Still, despite appearances, the guy won five tournaments last year and eight over the last two years. With time off to focus on his game, he could return to some form of competitiveness. His heart’s not in question; it’s his head that’s the issue right now.

____
Jay Busbee is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at jay.busbee@yahoo.com or find him on Facebook or on Twitter.

Follow @jaybusbee

Devil Ball Golf – Golf – Yahoo Sports