If fellow South African Ernie Els, who was in the last pairing with Goosen had won the US Open instead of Goosen, Els would have overtaken Woods as the world's number one player. Woods has been the world's number one golfer since overtaking David Duvall in 1999. He was so far ahead of the second ranked player at one time that it would have taken the second-ranked player close to two years overtake Woods. Now Woods is barely two strokes ahead of Els and Fiji's Vijay Singh. The pathetic way that Woods is playing, combined with surging Els, Singh and Phil Mickelson, it is a matter of weeks before Woods loses his top ranking to any of these three players.

So, what has happened to the world's number one sports icon? In short, faulty swing, parting from the world's best swing coach and overconfidence bordering on arrogance has destroyed Woods' game. Woods cannot hit straight anymore. Yet, he gets extremely upset if anyone points out the obvious. Unfortu-nately, Woods appears to have believed all the hyperbole that his father had uttered about his son; that Woods is a superman, the next best thing to Jesus! Golf is a humbling game; it has shown everyone, with the exception of Woods, how human Woods is!

Swing is the fundamental part of golf. To make the ball travel over 200 or 300 yards off the tee depending on the length of the hole, a golfer's arms and body have to generate tremendous power in split-seconds and be in perfect sync. Slight misalignment or mistiming of the swing can result in the ball going far off the fairway into the rough, which may result in a bogey (over par score). When Tiger Woods was playing well, he was hitting the fairway off the tee over 70 percent of the time. Lately, he is hitting the fairway less 50% of the time. That puts tremendous pressure on his short game, courts disaster and results inevitably in bogeys.

Golf's coaching has evolved over the last thirty years. The previous generation did not depend of swing coaches. The greatest golfer to date, Jack Nicklaus, on rare occasion sought the advice of a swing coach. The players corrected their own swing as they played along. Things are quite different now. Every young player has fine-tuned his swing under the watchful eye of a swing coach. The coach provides another pair of eyes. For ten years before 2002, Butch Harmon was Tiger Woods' swing coach and extra eyes. Having been weaned on, and prospered under the tutelage of a swing coach, it stands to reason that Woods cannot go it alone now. But try telling that to Woods!

Superstars these days also employ sports psychologists. These cheerleaders motivate players into thinking positively and banishing all negative thoughts. Lately, Tiger Woods has been accentuating the positive in the face hopelessness to such an extent as to make him look ridiculous. Nine strokes behind Retief Goosen, the US Open winner also in 2001, after three rounds Woods still claimed, "I can still win the tournament." Retorted The New York Times' columnist Dave Anderson: "No he can't!" Although his performance is getting steadily worse, Woods keeps on claiming that he is getting "close." Critics are now making fun of Woods' misplaced optimism. In its preview of the US Open, Sports Illustrated predicted that Woods would not win because of his "slump, er, because he is close!"

It took Woods' coach Butch Harmon to articulate what every golfer is thinking privately of Woods' golf: Woods is in denial about the problems in his game starting with the swing. Harmon said that Woods looks like a different player than when he coached him, with a messed up swing. Woods has not won a stroke play PGA tournament since last October. Like other average players, Woods cannot play well for more than two of the four days in a tournament. Harmon commented: "For him to stand there in every interview and say he is getting close and he feels really good about what he is doing I think he is in denial. I just think Tiger Woods is not playing well. He is not swinging the golf club well and he is not working the right things."

As expected, Woods reacted sharply: "I don't know why Butch would say that. Obviously, he does not know I'm working on, and he's never asked me and I've never talked him about it, and no one knows. I don't understand why he would say anything like that, especially when we've been as close as we are. And we've resolved everything, I thought. I thought everything would have been cool. For him to go off and say things like that, I don't understand where he is coming from. Friends say that face to face. If you go say something like that, you go right up to my face and say it. That's what we used to do. That's the way it should have been handled." Woods still does not get it, does he? The fact that his game stinks in spite of Woods' claim to the contrary is a validation of Harmon's criticism. This time Harmon did not back off. He added that the Woods that he knew was his (Woods's) number one critic. If he played poorly, he would say so in the press conference, rush out and go to the practice range. These days, observed Harmon, although Woods is playing poorly, he would never admit to it, or rush to the practice range to correct his game. I doubt that Woods realizes Harmon has done him a huge favour by shining the spotlight on the problems in Woods's game that Woods is trying to hide.

Woods's friends and enemies agree that to get back to the top he must get back with Harmon. It is doubtful that Woods will, because of misplaced pride. Woods believes that Harmon was getting too much credit for coaching him. And Harmon was getting tired of Woods' demand that he attend every major Woods plays in. Woods has such an inflated ego that he believes Harmon should be his coach on demand. Woods is great, but not that great.

One of the reasons why boxing legend Muhammad Ali remains the writer's number one hero is because in a sport that relies on brawn, Ali used brain. Unfortunately, not all jocks are that smart. For some inexplicable reason, the greatest basketball player in the history of the game, Michael Jordan, retired from the game for three years at his prime to play minor league baseball before returning to basketball! To the delight of his competitors, Tiger Woods is in denial that he is in a major slump and needs his coach Butch Harmon back. No one in the history of golf has talked his way out of a slump. Tiger Woods will not be the first one.