The 2021 Major season: Winners and Losers

Tiger Woods

The 2021 season was obviously a wasted one for Woods. The February car crash destroyed his chance of competing, and leaves open the question of his status moving forward. Beyond that, Woods is advancing rapidly through his 40s, making a productive recovery even more questionable.

Since it is beyond my scope of knowledge to guess what, if anything, Woods may have left, the following is more of a career assessment than a damage assessment.

Since posting an astonishing five-year peak score of -2.68 in 2002, Woods has stood atop the peak performance list. Nobody’s especially close to that. Nicklaus is second at -2.35 (1971-75), but the closest anybody’s come to Woods since 2002 was Mickelson, and he only got to -2.06 between 2001 and 2005.

The real question is whether Woods has any career movement left, and if he does, whether that movement could be positive.

Were he able to play, Woods would be 46 in 2022. But his career rating was hurt by his play in both 2019 and 2020, and that’s notwithstanding his memorable 2019 Masters victory. Remember that he followed that with missed cuts at both the PGA and British Open.

Of his most recent 20 Major starts, Woods has either missed the cut or delivered a score worse than the field average in 13 of those 20 starts. That includes a stretch of four straight dating back to the 2019 British Open.

Tiger being Tiger, it is always dangerous to rule out miraculous occurrences.

But combine the uncertainties of coming back from a serious auto accident with his advancing age and declining performance, and one wonder s whether the accident locked Woods in for all time on the career chart. He ranks fourth on that chart, at -58.59. That trails Nicklaus (-108.71), Snead (-82.23) and Hagen (-76.19).