Tiger Woods must go.
And then come back to repair his game.
Business Insider reported that a pair of people close to the game believes that Woods needs to take an extended break from golf to repair his suddenly fragile psyche. While it was his back that kept him out of 2015, his emotional makeup is in need of healing, and a break could solve his problems.
Golf Digest writer Jaime Diaz suggests that Woods never has fully recovered emotionally from his 2009 Thanksgiving weekend car crash that revealed extra-marital affairs that disgraced him and ended up with Elin Nordegren divorcing him.
"The line of demarcation is clear, because as a golfer, Woods has not been himself since," Diaz wrote. "I believe it's fair to posit that the trauma of being publicly shamed changed him. Before, he possessed the right makeup for a dominating champion. Ever since, he hasn't."
Golf teaching pro predicts Tiger Woods triumphant return because "he's not programmed to lose."
A counter-argument could be made that Woods won five tournaments in 2013 and returned to the No. 1 ranking - even though none of those wins came in a major event.
Diaz told Business Insider that Woods' game at the Waste Management Phoenix Open was "shocking" to watch.
"To me that's not technique. That's not injury. That's psychological. That's internal. That's profound. Something happened to this guy's nervous system.
"... The way to overcome it is to get away and really look at your life in a holistic way."
Woods' best friend in college, Notah Begay, also went on the Dan Patrick Show on Monday and echoed Diaz's sentiment about a break from the game for Woods.
"If he were to take three to six, nine months off and come back at the age of 40 he could still have three to five really good years left in him," he said.
Begay, however, said he believed Woods' problems were more physical than mental, which has contributed to his downfall.
"The physical limitations start bleeding into your technique and your mechanics," Begay said. "Your body starts to compensate. Golf is a very precise sport. Trying to get that club head on the ball and create a pretty straight shot is a difficult thing to do over 72 holes.
"So the mechanical deficiencies leaked into his confidence and then confidence leads into doubt and then it's just an avalanche of doubt and second-guessing after that. That's kind of what we're seeing, this culmination of physical scar tissue from his injury, mental scar tissue from playing a lot of bad golf, and now [his] confidence is definitely lower than it's been in a long time."
Woods has made no mention of taking a break, other than to get his back right again after withdrawing from the Farmers Insurance Open after 11 holes of the first round last week.
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