He was on top of the world and a huge favorite when he lost to Buster Douglas.I don't see how Tyson was a huge fall from grace.
I don't think there has been a bigger fall from badassery to suckitude in sports history.
All similar cases are due to injury. Just like Tiger's. Bo Jackson comes to mind.
Bad knee and back. You just can't play golf well with a bad back. He also fired Butch Harmon and "reinvented" his swing. Maybe he had to due to injuries. Anyway, he will never be very good again.
Steroids.
No one will say it, but having seen/talked to him in person, I'd bet money on it.
He was the Barry Bonds of Golf. A talented player that became a monster on Roids.
See how it broke down the bodies of many MLB players. Ken Camminiti for one.
Only 2 players worse. He beat Fowler and a club pro, nobody else.
Golf is a funny thing, when it goes it can go completely and almost overnight. Guys are world beaters one day, get the yips, their confidence disappears and they never contend again. Tiger is a complete basket case, he's got middle-age 'roid body breakdown and huge mental problems with the short game. So he can't hit it straight, can't chip, can't putt and can't fix any of it.
Years of roids have broken his body beyond repair.
The other side of it is that the competition has gotten better. Tiger was the Michael Jordan of golf. He ushered in a new style and new mentality to the game.
i never seen somebody fall of this bad before dang
is it all the women problems?
I agree with the back surgery. If you don't have proper range of motion when coming off the swing, that doesn't just affect the physics, but can affect confidence if you expect pain with every swing...
I'm sure even if he loses some power in his swing, he could still play at a very high level if he were to heal properly and put in time getting his game back. I remember Peyton Manning and his neck surgery...it took him a while to get his throwing accuracy back, but he did.
It's happened before. Notice the former golf pros now on TV. David Duval's fall was probably worse and faster, and he couldn't blame back or other health problems. He just flat-out lost it.
Fern
Only 2 players worse. He beat Fowler and a club pro, nobody else.
Golf is a funny thing, when it goes it can go completely and almost overnight. Guys are world beaters one day, get the yips, their confidence disappears and they never contend again. Tiger is a complete basket case, he's got middle-age 'roid body breakdown and huge mental problems with the short game. So he can't hit it straight, can't chip, can't putt and can't fix any of it.
I thought Duval had vertigo or something.
He did. Duval had a bunch of problems and vertigo was surely part of the fall, but his decline started before the vertigo. He freely admits that he lost the motivation needed to stay at that level. He worked his ass off, chased the dream, got to the very top and thought "is this all there is?" Once he got there he found out that being #1 was not as fulfilling as he hoped and he started to slide because he just didn't care. And he had back and wrist and shoulder problems and he really fell off quickly because he was in pain and wasn't motivated to practice, so he just half-assed it. Then he got the vertigo and the bottom fell out.
Non-golfers can't understand how hard golf is on the body, especially to play at that level. It takes a lot of reps hitting hundreds, even thousands of balls every week and every swing is putting a lot of stress on the back, shoulders, knees, elbows and wrists. Every golfer is living on borrowed time, a few freaks can keep going well into their 50s and even into the 60s, but those guys are one in a thousand. Most of them hit a wall physically when they're in the area of 40 years old and a whole lot hit a different wall mentally when they develop the yips later in their careers. Tiger seems to have hit both walls simultaneously. He practiced like a maniac, damaged his body, went to roids and HGH to maintain and get over the injuries, now he's paying the price and as his body went to shit he lost his confidence and now he's a mental basket case too. Getting the chipping yips is nothing physical, it's a simple, effortless motion that puts no stress on the body. He's not struggling in the short game because of his back or his knee or any other physical ailments. It's entirely mental, his brain is mush and he stands over the ball thinking of how he's going to screw up. It happened to Palmer and Hogan and Tom Watson and a lot of other great players. One day you think you can't ever lose and the next you're standing over a short putt or chip and you literally can't swing because you're afraid of what will happen.
Interesting...didn't know the "yips" is an actual condition.
Interesting...didn't know the "yips" is an actual condition.