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The Road Ahead Is More Harder

After the car crash, scandal… all seemed aligned for Tiger Woods to have a monster 2010.

He’ll be defending champion of sorts at both the U.S. (Pebble Beach) and British (St. Andrews) Opens, having won those tournaments the last time they were played at those venues, making it seem all the more likely that he would nab his 15th and 16th major titles next summer. He still might. It would put him on the verge of surpassing Jack Nicklaus, whose 18 major professional titles remain the gold standard.

But if we’ve learned anything from this year, including this bizarre peek into Woods’s Clintonian personal life, it is this: If Tiger is to top Jack, as has long been predicted, he probably won’t be blowing the doors off the old master at 120 mph like we once thought was a fait accompli.

Forget Phil. What will Tiger do next? Spill everything in one big steaming heap to Barbara Walters and be done with it? Blame the Florida Highway Patrol? This is what Woods now ponders in lieu of things that might actually help him win at Augusta for the first time since 2005, or atone for his major-less 2009.

Maybe he cancels the 2010 season to glue the pieces of his life back together. Maybe he potatoes-out for a while and tries to digest the excruciating last seven days. Or maybe he walks away from it all, for good. Going rogue, they call it.

The fact is that Tiger’s got a lot more to worry about than winning at least five more majors, or hated Cal’s recent victory over Stanford’s favored football team — a game Woods attended.

Woods’s actions and words will be parsed endlessly in the 24/7 news cycle, as will those of his wife, Elin Nordegren, and “the other woman,” Jaimee Grubbs, if that’s what she was. The late-night comedians will tee off. We’ve seen this movie before.

From a golf perspective, Woods is still young. He turns 34 later this month and, barring further trouble from his balky left knee, he should have many good years left. He knows winning like Wimpy knew hamburgers.

But Woods was already showing signs of decay before the events of the last week. He can no longer dominate the way he once did because he no longer knows with much certainty where his drives will land. He no longer intimidates the way he did, and he even lost the 54-hole lead at a major for the first time in August, at the Pga Championship. (Grubbs and Tiger’s Cadillac Escalade now join Y.E. Yang on the short list of evidence that Woods is human—Tiger-I’m Human and I’m not Perfect.)

And Yang isn’t the only emboldened and/or surging would-be rival. Phil Mickelson is coming off season-ending victories at the Tour Championship and HSBC Champions, both of which Woods also played. Mickelson, born again with the Putter and conjuring some of his best golf yet, looks eager for 2010.

What’s more, golf’s pool of young challengers is deeper than any time in recent memory. Rory McIlroy, Ryo Ishikawa, Jason Day, Anthony Kim, Rickie Fowler — so many phenoms are circling that one seems bound to rise up and take a bite out of Tiger sooner or later.

And now Woods has his messy personal life to ponder.

Golf is not a reaction sport; there’s copious time to think, so it’s hard to thrive when your life is ground under repair. It may be close to impossible to win a major in that condition, even for a man of such legendary focus as Woods.

Remember, Woods said he tried too hard to win the 2007 Masters for the memory of his recently deceased father, Earl. It didn’t work out. Now comes an even greater challenge: performing while patching things up with Elin.

What if she bails? Woods has never hid the fact that for him it’s all about the golf, but surely he knows his marriage can’t be separated from the rest of his life. He knows that when Jack Nicklaus was asked to explain his success while juggling fatherhood, business obligations and other potential distractions, he always pointed to his wife, Barbara.

Will the father of Sam Alexis (2) and Charlie Axel (10 months) get the same unwavering support from his wife? Golf’s first couple, Tiger and Elin, seem to have a lot to talk about.

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