Tiger Woods has 10 days left to avoid a completely lost season

The next 10 days are the latest crossroads in the sunset arc of Tiger Woods’ career. He has two tournaments left, on two venues where he’s won before, to find any success and salvage what would otherwise be a completely lost season. Tiger has missed large swaths of the schedule before, and played recent seasons without a win, but he’s never spent an entire season just doing nothing -- not winning a major, not winning a tournament, not improving or working on a swing-change overhaul.

It’s a bit off-putting to come to Firestone and have little-to-nothing expected from Woods. He’s owned this tournament, winning eight times, including his dominant performance last year when Sunday’s final round was uncompetitive. It’s a course that sets up perfectly for him, with little trouble to accentuate inaccuracy off the tee, his biggest weakness. Woods is not the favorite this week, not expected to win, and not expected to really contend. And unless he makes a move and proves all those expectations wrong, it’ll be the same next week at the PGA Championship at Valhalla, where Woods won the last time that course held a major.

Tiger has played a truncated, selective schedule for more than a decade now, but we’re 10 days away from the game’s singular superstar passing through 2014 gaining nothing. Tiger has undoubtedly tinkered, making his swing shorter to adjust to the realities of age and back injury, but what has been accomplished or gained as the calendar flips to August? In five official PGA Tour starts, he has an MDF, MC, WD, and two completed tournaments finished quietly out of contention. The WGC-Bridgestone is a no-cut limited field event, so at least he’s guaranteed four rounds of competitive reps before the PGA.

It’s a stunning reversal from this moment a year ago. Tiger had just rolled to his fifth win of the season. At the time, I wrote that these victories only seemed to prompt more questions about why Tiger couldn’t get it done at the majors. Winning these tournaments he’d won so many times before, and setting new absurd records, only seemed to heighten the scrutiny and reset an impossible standard.

This year? We’re just looking for those cliched “bright spots.” We want to see Tiger make some birdies, shoot some rounds under-par, and stay healthy. Even during those winless 2010 and 2011 seasons, we leaned on the fact that Tiger was overhauling his swing under Sean Foley. He was allegedly working to make it less violent, and avoid the knee troubles that had wiped out much of the preceding seasons. There was an explanation of the “lost” years and an understanding that he’d probably soon circle back around into the best player in the world, in the same way he did after the struggles changing swings under Hank Haney and Butch Harmon.

Unless Tiger wins or places inside the top five in the next two weeks, he’s going to miss the FedExCup. Then we’ll have a month of debate over whether the 14-time major champion and perhaps the best American golfer ever is worthy of one of Tom Watson’s three Ryder Cup captain’s picks. The reversal from this point last year to now is dramatic, but it’s the latest in the completely unpredictable Woods we’ve had since 2008. He was once the sport’s most inexorable force but now his game and health change from month-to-month and year-to-year.

With the current incarnation of Tiger Woods, we always exaggerate the importance of when he plays well, plays average, and plays poorly. But now that he’s finally fallen off the pace of Jack Nicklaus’ major championship record, these last two tournaments are the only chances for a significant moment in Tiger’s current N/A season. If he can finally join the battle in 2014, Firestone would be the place to do it. There are 10 days left to avoid an abrupt end to a completely lost year.