What now for Tiger Woods after his latest major disappointment?

His post-round interview over and his cap turned backwards, Tiger Woods climbed into the driving seat of his Mercedes courtesy car and drove out of the players' car park on Friday night to who knows where.
It was ever thus for the enigmatic Woods, but as he disappeared into his own private world he left behind a public world that has changed for good. Once upon a time it seemed Woods was too big for golf. In the aftermath of a shocking two days here at the US PGA Championship, where the former world No1 turned in his worst ever major performance, it seemed as if the game of golf had become too big for him.
Mr Control is no longer in control and the strain is finally beginning to show. Woods looked utterly humbled as he assessed his 10-over-par performance – a rare state indeed for a fiercely proud athlete but one that seemed to free him from the rhetorical prison he has built for himself over the years. There were no platitudes or cliches. He did not bristle, he spoke quietly and with an apparent honesty seldom heard when he stands before a microphone.
"I showed signs that I can hit the ball exactly how I know I can. Unfortunately, I just didn't do it enough times," he said, before looking ahead to his future. "Now I'll have nothing to do but work on my game,"
Simple. Except, as Woods knows better than anyone, it is not. At this level it never is. For one thing, how exactly will he work on his game? Will he spend endless hours on the practice range? Or will he choose to play in a few tournaments? He might have been expected to play in the PGA Tour's four end-of-season play-off events, but they are open only to players who finish inside the top 125 in the FedEx Points list – which he did not. He was expected to play in the HSBC Championship in China in November but, as things stand, he cannot. The event – a world golf championship – is open to the tournament winners from around the world and the sport's top 25-ranked players. Woods has not won for almost two years and is currently ranked 30th.
There is a suggestion he could enter one of the events during the PGA Tour's "fall season" – a run of second-tier events that usually attract players desperately trying to keep their tour card. "It is something we will discuss," Woods's agent, Mark Steinberg, said on Friday evening.
Andre Agassi did something along these lines when his career plumbed the depths in 1998, dropping down to play on the second-tier Challenger Tour with the aim of learning how to win. It worked for the American tennis legend, who came back to complete the career grand slam, but it seems unlikely that Woods would humble himself to such a degree. His more likely approach is to set up his stall on the nearest practice course and, to coin the old Ben Hogan phrase, "dig it out of the dirt".
If this is his choice, he will do it under the guidance of Sean Foley, the controversial swing coach whom many believe is partly, though not entirely, responsible for the deterioration in Woods's game.
The pair have been together for a year. For long spells of that time Woods has been recuperating from injury, making him a less than ideal pupil for Foley's radical theories. Yet they have done some work together and the results have been erratic. When Woods is good – as he has been in short bursts, such as at this year's Masters – he is not as good as he used to be. His driving is as wild as it always was and his short game – once his greatest strength – is now mediocre at best. There is scarcely a serious analyst in America who believes Woods should stick with Foley ("Go back to Hank [Haney] or Butch [Harmon]" said Brandel Chamblee, a former PGA Tour player and now prominent television commentator).
But the only opinion that matters is that of Woods and he is not about to ditch his man. "Sean and I haven't had the opportunity to really sit down and do a lot of work, so this will be our time," he said. "He's going to have a child here soon, so he's going to be at home. He's not going to be travelling much and I'll be down at Jupiter [his new $55m home], so we'll be able to do some work."
Can Tiger Woods Win Again?

Tiger Woods is without a doubt one of the best golfers, if not the best golfer of our time. Tiger, in his heyday, was all but unstoppable. From his early amateur days to his beginning in the PGA. We have watched him go from a young college kid to an iconic professional golfer, but, as we all know, nothing lasts forever. Was he the cause of his own downfall? Absolutely, and Tiger would be the first one to tell you that himself. The fact that Woods has blazed such an incredible trail is part of the reason why we are all so stunned that he hasn't won a tournament in 18 months.
Let's back up a little and think about this for a moment. He was on top of the Golf World and he had the money to buy or do anything he wanted and he also had the perfect family life with a beautiful wife and two adorable children. He also had the temptation of women on the side because when your in his position, women throw themselves at you and that's a hard situation for any man to resist. Even worse, when your in such a position, all you have are yes people around you and people putting you up on this high horse and foolishly thinking that you can do no wrong. That's a lot for anybody to juggle and eventually the walls will come crashing down like they did on Tiger. Now, imagine being so humbled because you've lost everybody's respect, your loving family, your dignity, your way of life, plus the shame and embarrassment because all your dirty laundry is out there on every talk show, radio show, and on everybody's lips. It's no wonder that he wanted to crawl in a hole and disappear for a while.
At that point, who cared about golf, Tiger was desperate to do anything to keep from losing his family. I've been there, done that and it is a very tough pill to swallow. Granted, a lot of people would say that he had it coming, but when the reality hits you, it just absolutely crushes you. Once you get over the realization that your marriage is over, that's one thing, but when the reality hits you that your not going to be a daily part of your children's lives, you don't get over that one, you just somehow learn to live with it. Now, if that's not enough, then you have his health issues and the coaching issue.
When you go through things like that, it takes a while to get back to your norm and I believe that is where Tiger is right now. All of the golf commentators, and I won't name names, but pretty much all of them have expressed serious doubt in Tiger's abilities to turn this thing around. Again, we haven't seen anything like the 2009 Tiger Woods, which is the last time Woods won a tournament, I believe it was mid November,2009, but he showed a lot of focus at the 2011 Masters and he had the walk and the determination stare like the winning Tiger of old. He also just dropped to number 8, behind Paul Casey, in the world golf rankings and believe me when I say that he doesn't like it one bit. Tiger Woods is 35 now and along with his nagging injuries, he simply has to re-invent himself and find another way to get to the win column.