• US PGA Championship, Round Two

Tiger's dirty laundry an embarrassment for everyone

Tiger Woods wasn't exactly accurate off the tee © Getty Images

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There was a point - somewhere between his greenside bunker shot that found water on one hole and fairway wood from the rough that found trees on the next - where you simply didn't want to watch this professional hack it around like a 18-handicapper.

That's why there shouldn't be 20 places on offer to club professionals at the US PGA Championship, the uninitiated might well have said. But unfortunately it wasn't one of the club professionals, or even a mediocre tour professional, who has chopping it around Atlanta Country Club - otherwise the camera would have just cut away and never returned.

It was Tiger Woods.

The 14-time major champion has had numerous magical moments on the golf course during major championships, but the past two days have not even seen one of them. Instead almost everything went wrong from him. His driving and ironplay were so bad he couldn't have found more sand if he was playing on a course in the middle of the Sahara. His chipping was sloppy, and his putting was occasionally nothing short of horrific.

Thank God (no, seriously - divine intervention is probably the only way it happened) that Woods inexplicably managed to get to three-under early on Thursday morning. Otherwise he could have shot 80 on the opening day, and might have missed the cut at some ignominious number like 20-over.

That's the sort of numbers that ancient former champions, using the exemption that comes with such status, tend to shoot. Woods has won the US PGA four times but shouldn't be in that category just yet.

To be fair to the 35-year-old, he did show some flashes of quality when the pressure was off over the closing stages, and an overly-ambitious attempt at a final flourish down the last only added a further negative slant to his final score of 10-over.

"I was in nearly 20 bunkers in two days, and four or five water balls - so that's not going to add up to a good score," Woods said. "It's frustration and disappointment that I"m not contending in the tournament. Next time."

Woods suggested he was still adapting to the distance he was now hitting it with his new swing, but that doesn't really scratch the surface of his problems.

Most players do best when they are swinging freely and instinctively - or, as mental coach Dr Bob Rotella put it this week, when they are "totally unconscious" - and begin to struggle a lot when they allow swing thoughts and positions to clutter their thinking. Woods has always been more technically-minded than the average golfer, but it was nevertheless alarming to hear him on Thursday explain why a round that started so well suddenly fell apart.

"Because I was three-under early, and I said, you know what, every shot I hit up to that point were all mechanical thoughts, I put the club in a certain position, and I was doing that and I said, 'you know what, I'm feeling good. Let's just let it go'.

"And it cost me the whole round."

It's an especially odd sentiment considering the clear fact that Woods ended his injury hiatus specifically so he could try and win his 15th major. He insisted he was only returning, first of all at last week's WGC-Bridgestone Invitational, because he believed he could compete to win.

Tiger Woods is still relying on mechanical swing thoughts © Getty Images

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Whether he was lying to himself or just the rest of the world, that was clearly not the case. A respectable first round at Firestone apart, Woods has shown nothing to suggest he is currently capable of winning another tournament. Indeed, he's shown little to suggest he is capable of even making a living on the PGA Tour.

After all, with his missed cut he ensured he remained outside the top 125 for the FedEx Cup play-offs. As he has declined the chance to play next week, that means he is no longer eligible to play on the US tour for the remainder of the current season.

He won't return to action until November, in Australia. In the meantime, he said he would work extensively with Sean Foley to get his game into the shape - the shape he insisted he was already in.

Earlier in the week, a respected American sportswriter asked whether anyone would take any notice of Tiger Woods if we were had no memory of all the great things he has done on the course before. The answer, at least based on his two rounds this week in Georgia, is probably not. If anything, we'd probably wonder how such an erratic player (who was beaten by no fewer than five club professionals) had even managed to get into the field.

The issues are clear for most experts to see but, nevertheless, on Thursday Woods was asked what he still needed to address.

"It's going to be a lot," Woods acknowledged. "It's a laundry list."

Hopefully now he will stop airing that laundry in public. Go away, and this time don't come back until both your body and your game is in a fit state.

It's just embarrassing. For you and us.

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