Is this Tiger's worst year?

• By Golf Channel Digital
• Aug 12, 2011 9:15 PM ET

As Tiger Woods missed the cut at the PGA Championship following rounds of 77-73, GolfChannel.com senior writers Randall Mell and Rex Hoggard debate whether or not this is the worst year for Tiger.

By RANDALL MELL

JOHNS CREEK, Ga. – Tiger Woods may have won six times on the PGA Tour in 2009, but he has to remember it as immensely worse than going winless in this injury-riddled year.

The humiliation endured with details of his marital infidelities going public in celebrity gossip magazines at the end of ‘09 had to make it so much more miserable than this year.

And yet 2010 has to rank as the worst year.

Last year, Woods suffered what has to be the most painful loss of his career. He lost the union of his family in a divorce.

Woods’ game is suffering this year. He looks so lost on a golf course, and yet he tells us he’s moving into a better place in his personal life.

By REX HOGGARD

JOHNS CREEK, Ga. – For Tiger Woods, 2011 will be second consecutive year without a PGA Tour victory, just his sixth without a major and the basement of a career that had defied slumps.

Statistically 2010 may have been more unsightly, but the last eight months ring of rock bottom because 2011 was supposed to be a rebound calendar, the season when Woods changed the conversation with his play and returned to his historic ways.

At January’s Farmers Insurance Open Woods set the tone: “I'm looking forward to getting out there and playing, and basically feeling the heat again and see where I need to make improvements.”

The answer to that question came like a blast of hot wind across Atlanta Athletic Club this week. Rounds of 77 and 73 left Woods a touchdown adrift of the cut and on the outside looking in to this year’s FedEx Cup playoffs.

Unless he plays any Fall Series events, which he said he “might,” Woods will end an eventful year with eight starts, just two top 10s, a missed cut and a withdrawal from The Players.

Injury is to blame for much of Woods’ woes, as well as a not-ready-for-prime swing. But that doesn’t ease the reality that 2011 was simply the worst.