By Jason Rowan
It’s been a very, very long time since Tiger Woods wasn’t counted among the 100 top-ranked players in the world according to the World Golf Ranking. The fact that the 39-year-old now sits at No. 104 simply is the latest evidence of just how precipitous of a fall he has suffered in recent years.
Following the conclusion of this past weekend’s tournaments, Woods is outside the Top 100. He hasn’t played a competitive round of golf since announcing in early February he was taking leave of absence from tournament play after a run of sub-par play that saw him card a career-worst 82 at the Waste Management Phoenix Open. His withdrawal from the Farmers Insurance Open on Feb. 6 was the last time Woods played competitively.
Woods, in his announcement, suggested he will not return to tournament golf until “I think I’m ready.” The golfer’s late 2014/early 2015 play featured what many pundits observed to be a troubling case of the “yips.”
Woods reigned atop the World Golf Rankings for 683 weeks during his career and his current stint out of the top 100 is the first time that has been the case since Sept. 29, 1996, when he ranked at No. 225. When Woods turned pro, he was ranked 433rd, but rocketed up the rankings in short time, landing at No. 75 after notching his first win at the 1996 Las Vegas Invitational.
But in the end, Woods now sees himself surrounded in the World Golf Rankings by the likes of Thorbjorn Olesen and Jason Kokrak - hardly the company anyone could have envisioned for the 14-time major champion.
Since announcing he would not compete in the Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill in early March, speculation has run rampant that Woods may not play in the Masters. That would mark just the second time since 1994 — he also missed the tournament last year due to injury — that Woods has not been in the field at Augusta National. Woods did indicate, though, that he is “hopeful” he’ll be among the golfers competing in the Masters when it begins on April 9.
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