Rock bottom for Tiger Woods? Even Notah Begay is laughing at his ‘deactivated glutes’

Tiger Woods has been the target of many of jokes in the past, notably after his Escalade backed into that fire hydrant and the dirty secrets of his private life gushed forth. But the world’s 62nd-ranked golfer may have finally hit rock bottom Monday when Notah Begay III went on the radio and laughed out loud at his good friend’s current predicament.

Woods returned in December to the Hero World Challenge after a long layoff to nurse his surgically repaired back and tied for last after chunking and hurling his way around Isleworth. Almost a month later, and following the worst score of his professional life and a missed cut at the Phoenix Open, he was again DFL.

Then came last week’s miseries at Torrey Pines, a formerly friendly track that had yielded eight of Woods’ 79 PGA Tour victories but that has now become the scene of Woods’ third WD in his last eight starts. While there was nothing to chuckle about as Tiger began grabbing at his back and wincing -- as he did last year at Doral -- what was kinda hilarious was the convoluted way the injured golfer explained what happened.

“It’s frustrating that it started shutting down like that. I was ready to go. I had a good warm-up session the first time around. Then we stood out here and I got cold, and everything started deactivating again. And it’s frustrating that I just can’t stay activated,” Woods said in the parking lot Thursday after quitting on his 11th hole and removing his spikes.

“It’s just my glutes are shutting off. Then they don’t activate and then, hence, it goes into my lower back,” Tiger noted. “So, I tried to activate my glutes as best I could, in between, but it just they never stayed activated. [I first felt it] whenever we were standing there on the putting green to see if we were going to go play or not. And I tried to activate it before we went back out, but it just never did.”

During his interview of Begay, Patrick alluded to Woods’ description of what was, everyone has come to agree, Tiger’s inability to warm up his lower back after two weather-related delays caused it to tighten.

“Tiger said his ‘glutes failed him,’ whatever that means,” said Patrick, to which Begay responded with amusement.

“I think it was ‘the glutes weren’t firing,’ Dan,” Begay clarified with a chortle.

After Patrick conceded he had never heard an athlete express, well, anything, in just that way, Begay agreed.

“I think Webster’s is going to add that in the next edition of the dictionary,” Begay said, still snickering. “I guess if that’s the place we have to start, we’re way further behind than we originally thought.”

Before getting sidetracked by the whole “deactivated glutes” hoo-ha, Begay offered a sobering assessment of the state of Woods’ mind after recent events -- mental issues, he said, that accrued from his many injuries.

“The physical limitations start bleeding into your technique and your mechanics. Your body starts to compensate. Golf is a very precise sport. Trying to get that clubhead on the ball and create a pretty straight shot is a difficult thing to do over 72 holes,” Begay said.

“The mechanical deficiencies leaked into his confidence and then confidence leads into doubt, and then it’s just an avalanche of doubt and second-guessing after that,” he added. “That’s kind of what we’re seeing, this culmination of physical scar tissue from his injuries, mental scar tissue from playing a lot of bad golf, and now [his] confidence is definitely lower than it’s been in a long time.” For sure, that’s no laughing matter.