Tiger Woods Drops Out of the Top 50 in Rankings

Woods trying to find his game. Photo Credit: Brian Spurlock/USA Today Sports
 

Tiger Wood's struggles reviving his career continue into this new golf season.

By: Michael Hanley
Tiger's poor showing at the Waste Management Open at TPC Scottsdale in Arizona, which included shooting 82 on his final round there before missing the cut, not only had an effect on his own overall state of his golf game but also to the ranking he dropped to in the standings.

He has fallen out of the top 50 in the rankings for the first time since 2011. He must get together a solid few rounds of golf at this week's Farmer's Insurance open in order to regain entry into that Top 50 or face an even more embarrassing and stepper fall in the rankings. This can have  a huge impact on just how his season will look like and turn out to be for the former world #1 golfer.

Should woods put up another poor showing, he will put himself in  a very tight bind moving forward. There is a potential that he could miss out on playing in the WGC Cadillac Championship, a tournament he has won seven times, including recently back in 2013. That would be a very difficult and miserable low for Woods to face having to go through.

He does have two chances to make this situation cease to exist, one at the Farmer's Insurance Open and at the Honda Classic coming up in March. As the 56th ranked player in the world, if he takes advantage of both opportunities, he will be back in the Top 50 and be able to play in that tournament he has dominated in the past.

Hard to figure we would see an all time great golfer like Woods be down this much on his luck but that is the reality for him these days as a pro golfer on a tour where the young guns like Rory McIlroy and Rickie Fowler are emerging and taken a foothold on the top of the rankings  and have raised the bar in terms of what it takes to compete and then win one of these tournaments and majors.

At this stage of his career, Woods does not have the power nor ability to consistently churn out great results like he use to in his prime. Now injuries have definitely played a part in his inability to compete at the high level we became accustomed to for all those glorious years he had.

These injuries have come at a time where he cannot recover from them as quickly as he could ten years ago, bodies change and their ability to withstand and recover from pain is very hard to predict, let alone do anything about it.

 He has come through those and now needs to refine and find his consistent game, one that can at least make him visible at these events and be at least in position to get on the leaderboard. Until that day comes we are left to wonder can Tiger Woods put himself out of this slump.