LOS ANGELES: Tiger Woods tees off Thursday as a single man again, desperate to recapture some form and eke out the top 50 finish that would guarantee his presence in the next round of the PGA Tour playoffs.
Up until last November when a whirl of extra-marital affairs brought his world tumbling down, Woods`s qualification would have been a fait accompli, but so poor has he been of late that nothing is for certain.
With his divorce from ex-wife Elin Nordegren official from Monday, The Barclays provides the world number one with a chance to turn the page and reverse the downward spiral that has left his golf game in ruins.
Failure to make the top 57 however would mean the end of Woods`s PGA season and he would have to cross his fingers that Corey Pavin sees past the furor surrounding his private life and makes him a captain`s pick for the Ryder Cup.
Since returning to competitive golf four months ago at The Masters following the blistering sex scandal, Woods has not come close to winning a tournament.
At the Bridgestone Invitational earlier this month, he turned in the worst performance of his career, finishing second last in a tie for 78th. The 14-time major winner, who had won the event seven times previously, shot 18-over par and finished an embarrassing 30 shots behind eventual winner Hunter Mahan.
At this week`s tournament in New Jersey, Woods, in the unusual position of being 112th in the PGA points race, needs to finish 57th or better to make it through to next week`s Deutsche Bank Championship in Boston.
The top 100 are then whittled down to just 70 for the BMW Championship, before the leading 30 qualify for the season ending Tour Championship finale in Atlanta starting on September 23.
Woods is also hoping to earn enough qualifying points for the Ryder Cup, the biennial event against Europe`s best golfers which will be battled out this year at Celtic Manor in Wales in October.
Even if he makes the US Ryder Cup team, wives and girlfriends have assumed a larger role in the social side of the event in recent years and some leading figures in the game have long said it could be difficult for him.
"Turning up at Celtic Manor could be one of the hardest things Tiger ever does," European Ryder Cup captain Colin Montgomery wrote in a newspaper column several months ago.
"He will worry about how the wives of the other players will react to him. Some of them will be friends with Elin and they will sympathize with her anger and pain. Some of them might find it hard to welcome Tiger back into the group."
The bigger question is whether Woods, a golfing icon whose meteoric rise helped broaden the game and win legions of fans worldwide, will ever be able to rediscover the form that saw him claim 14 major titles.
Still chasing Jack Nicklaus`s record of 18 majors, Woods -- the world`s first billionaire sportsman, according to Forbes magazine -- needs to reclaim his place in the pantheon of sporting legends.
After a four-month lay off in which he attended sex addiction classes in a failed bid to rescue his marriage, Woods made his highly anticipated return in March at the Masters.
At the Augusta National -- a comfortable setting where he has captured four titles, his first in 1997 being the first major crown won by a black golfer -- he finished a respectable fourth.
Winless in nine events this season, Woods showed only flashes of his old self as he finished tied for fourth at the US Open, tied for 23rd at the British Open at Saint Andrews, and tied for 28th at the PGA Championship.
His last victory was in Australia last November, two weeks before he smashed his car into a fire hydrant outside his luxury Florida home.
Reports his angry wife was seen at the site brandishing a golf club spawned tabloid revelations that he had cheated on her with a multitude of women, including a porn star, a cocktail waitress and a Las Vegas club manager.
Divorce documents released on Tuesday showed how Woods`s poor golf form has coincided with the unraveling of his six-year marriage.
Less than 24 hours before he flew off to play in the British Open, where he finished 13 shots off the pace, Woods completed a four-hour course in parenting. He will share custody of their two children.
The couple signed their marital settlement agreement on July 3-4, the same weekend Woods took part in the AT&T National where he failed to break par in a USPGA Tour event for the first time in over a decade.
Woods will have to fight even harder to get his mantle back as a host of younger players have taken advantage of his fall from grace to surge forwards in the game.
One of those, America`s Dustin Johnson, hinted as much Tuesday at The Barclays, saying: "There`s a lot of different guys that`s won this year, and there`s only a few multiple winners."
Meanwhile, Woods could also lose his number one ranking at any time with long-time number two Phil Mickelson and England`s Lee Westwood waiting in the wings.
BDST: 1137 HRS, AUGUST 25, 2010
