Alliss On Tiger: "He's gone. He's gone at this moment."

From the geezers presser at the World Golf Hall of Fame, where Peter Alliss and Dan Jenkins held court.

Q.  Drawing on your collective wisdom, does Tiger win five more major championships?
    DAN JENKINS:  No.  Next question?

And a few minutes later...

DAN JENKINS:  Back to Tiger for a minute, it's going to be a great story if he does win a major because he'll be the first guy that ever did it with three golf swings.  It'll be a great story for all of us.  We had Oliver Moody do it with a cross‑handed putting stroke and we had Keegan Bradley do it with the belly putter last year.  We had Hale Irwin do it with contacts, as I recall, contact lenses.  But a guy has never done it with three golf swings.

PETER ALLISS:  I find as an old player and the son of one of the best players of his time, who was also a very good teacher in a simplistic way, I do not understand the thinking of Tiger Woods.  I think his golfing brain for some reason or other is completely addled.

Perhaps the good part of his brain for a period drained from here (indicating side of head) down to here (indicating lap), and that caused him great distress, probably a modicum of enjoyment at the time.  But he's gone.  And for somebody who can play and did play, he hit a few wild shots, but he was Gulliver in a land of Lilliputians.  We're talking about Nicklaus, Palmer, Player.  There was Floyd and Trevino and Casper and another 10, 12 competitors.  He didn't have one real for 10 years.  He didn't have a real chaser, a real competitor.  He dominated everyone.  He frightened everybody.  Then he gets into this trouble with the ladies, and seemingly he loses it, and then he has to start again.

I'm not saying I'm a great teaching guru.  I'd love to have a half an hour.  If I couldn't put him right ‑‑ if he can get this right, if he couldn't be put right in an hour, I'd go home and stick my head in a bucket of ice water, because to me it's so simple.  You stand and you swing.

Last year's Masters, I've known Arnold Palmer since he was a boy, and we've had some great battles, and we were sitting at the end of the new practice ground at Augusta, and there 50 yards away is Tiger Woods at the green nearest the television facility being shown how to chip.  You must do it this way, this way.  And I said to Arnold, are we seeing ‑‑ are we going?  He was the greatest chipper in the world for a period, and this guy is teaching ‑‑ no, don't do it that way.  It's like Pavarotti saying I'm fed up being a tenor; I think I'm going to sing as a baritone.  Land sake.  That's as stupid as that in my opinion.

That's not a criticism, it's an opinion.  But that's why he's fuddled and befuddled.  As Dan says, three swings, Gary Player, talking to him this afternoon, doing all these sort of things.  Trevino played that way and thank God never had a lesson, otherwise we never would have heard of him maybe.  But he's gone.  He's gone at this moment.