What Would the Career of Tiger Woods be like without His “Lost Decade”?

Tiger Woods, the winner of 82 PGA Tour events and numerous others around the world, was steam-rolling history 10 years ago.

He seemed a lock to wrap up 18 majors before 2015, never mind 2020. Tiger Woods even won a U.S. Open with fractures in his leg. That, of course, was 2008. But between then and now he looked both brilliant and like he was finished more than once.

The 2009 year started well and gave no hints of what he would eventually face. He won six times on the PGA Tour: The Arnold Palmer Invitational, The Memorial, the AT&T National, the Buick Open, the WGC Bridgestone and the BMW. He won more than $10 million, topped the Fed Ex points list and was No. 1 in the world. Really, it was an astonishing comeback from the broken leg and subsequent surgery.

Then, in November of that year, he had an argument with his wife, followed by an encounter with a fire hydrant. It looked like his world was going to turn into a fireball. A total conflagration. A complete inferno. And it did.

For a variety of reasons too numerous to mention, Woods didn’t play again until the 2010 Masters. Suffice to say, it was revealed that he had been leading what amounted to a double life.

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Following that Masters he withdrew from The Players, citing a neck problem, but was T4 at the U.S. Open, T23 at the British Open and T28 at the PGA. Those finishes were fairly amazing after what he had gone through both injury-wise and in the off-course hell that we won’t recount it here.

The next season, the injuries started to compound.

In 2011, he withdrew from the Wells Fargo with an Achilles tendon problem. A month later, he pulled out of The Players again, with the Achilles acting up and a sprain in his MCL. It got worse, and he missed the British Open.

Woods tried to come back at the WGC Bridgestone, T37, and at the PGA, but he missed the cut there. Had Woods’ body deserted him? Was it breaking down? He answered by winning his own tournament late in the year.

The next season, Woods played 19 PGA Tour events, but his results were schizophrenic. He was middle of the pack or great. He won the Arnold Palmer Invitational, and people started saying, “He’s back!” only to have him go T40 at the Masters and The Players.

As quickly as he became mediocre, he returned to the winner’s circle. Woods won The Memorial and the AT&T National. However, his best finishes the rest of the year was T3 at the British Open and third at Deutsch Bank. While inconsistent, Woods won three tournaments in 2012. That’s more than some PGA Tour players win in their entire careers.

By 2013, Tiger Woods was on fire again. He won FIVE tournaments: The Farmers Insurance Open, WGC Cadillac, Arnold Palmer Invitational, The Players and WGC Bridgestone. It looked as though he had absolutely turned his professional life, his personal life and his injuries around and that he was ready to start notching more majors on his Nike belt. It was a fabulous season, though major-less.

Then the injuries started to add up.

In 2014, at the Honda Classic, he withdrew on the 13th green of the final round with back spasms. He played the following week at the WGC Cadillac. Sometime between that tournament and the Masters, he had a microdiscectomy. Everyone at Team Tiger Woods was certain he would be back by summer. And he was, but it was like he was half a player.

By the end of 2014, no one knew whether back issues spelled the end of Tiger Woods’ career or not. And it got worse.

In 2015, Woods played only 11 events. He missed the cut in Phoenix and withdrew from Farmers after 11 holes saying his glutes were not firing. It was more than glutes.

Woods did not play again until the Masters where he finished T17. Of the 11 events he played in 2015, he missed the cut in five, including the three remaining majors, and withdrew in another tournament.

In September, he had a second microdiscectomy. Was this the end of Woods as a golfer? Then, a month later, he had another procedure to relieve pain.

In November of 2015, when he was made an assistant captain for the 2016 Ryder Cup, it was like an announcement that he was done, as far as his peers were concerned.

From that time on, the chances for his return to competitive golf looked very bleak, particularly when he played NO tournaments in 2016. Many players on the U.S. Ryder Cup team in 2016 said he could barely get out of the golf cart. He was moving very slowly.

Hard as it is to believe, it got worse. In 2017, he played the first two rounds at Farmers. Then his management team announced that he would not play in a handful of tournaments that were typically on his schedule. When he withdrew from the Masters, everyone knew it was serious, and it was. He had spinal fusion to relieve extreme back and leg pain. A month later, he was picked up for DUI caused by the painkillers he was taking.

It was another new low. Still, Woods is apparently an actual cat, and he had not used up his nine golf lives. He pointed to his tournament at the end of 2017 and planned to play, which, somehow, he did.

Nobody believed he could make any kind of a comeback in 2018. However, all sports fans were about to find out just what it meant to be a real champion.

In 2018, Tiger Woods played better with each tournament. After a T23 at Farmers, he missed the cut at the Genesis and then played Honda, where he finished 12th. His status had fallen in terms of events, so for the first time, he played Valspar. The tournament sold out of everything. Woods finished T2.

He kept adding tournaments and finally threatened at the PGA with a second-place finish. Woods made it through the playoffs, and in one of the most thrilling golf experiences of his career, he won the Tour Championship. He had completed the comeback, but he was exhausted. Even he admitted that.

With a victory to buoy him, he looked forward to 2019. Woods did not disappoint as he won the Masters which was his 15th major. The rest of the season, he seemed to just go through the motions. Finally, he revealed, after he did not make the Tour Championship, that he had subsequent surgery on his knee. So, was the Masters the end of it all?

Not so fast. This fall, in Japan, he returned to the ZOZO Championship, which he won, tying Sam Snead’s record of 82 victories.

So, was it Tiger Woods’ Lost Decade? Yes. Definitely.

With what he had to overcome in the last 10 years, it might have been a Lost Decade, but it might have been the strongest decade of his career. Between 2010 and the end of the calendar year 2019, Woods won 11 times, one of which was a major. That’s amazing considering what he had to overcome.

Next. United States Ryder Cup Team of the Decade for the 2010’s. dark

We do wonder what could have been. Could he have surpassed Jack Nicklaus’ 18 majors? Would he already have won 100 tournaments? We’ll never know.

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