BETHESDA, Md. — Tiger Woods’ 2008 season was The Year of the Knee.
To date, his 2009 comeback from knee surgery has been The Year of the Tease.
Woods at times this year has looked like the Woods of old, dominating golf courses and any challengers to his throne.
But he also has looked, well, human.
Just when you’ve expected him to seize the big moments this year — particularly at the Masters and U.S. Open — Woods has faltered, failing to close like the ruthless closer he’d always been in winning 45 of the 48 events in which held at least a share of the lead entering the final round before yesterday.
Although at the end of yesterday Woods would close in style, winning his own AT&T National at Congressional Country Club, he hardly looked like the sure thing most of us expected him to be for a lot of the day.
Because he’s set the bar so crazily high for himself, this has been a theme to Woods’ year so far. Just when you think he’s going to take off and fly, there are stops and starts, and his wins become more matters of survival than the overwhelming dominance he used to display regularly.
At the Masters, Woods finally made a charge on the front nine on Sunday before uncharacteristically fading on the final holes to finish in a tie for sixth.
At the U.S. Open, Woods hovered in contention all week but couldn’t make enough significant putts, and he fell short there, too, quietly finishing in another tie for sixth.
As impressive as this week’s win was for Woods, the majors are what his world revolves around.
Since last year’s U.S. Open victory, he’s been stuck on 14 major championships — one behind his tennis buddy Roger Federer, who won his record 15th yesterday at Wimbledon.
Oddly, Woods’ three wins this year have come in his final event before a major.
He won the Arnold Palmer Invitational before the Masters and he won Jack Nicklaus’ Memorial before the U.S. Open.
He surely hopes this win provides a better springboard for him at the British Open in two weeks at Turnberry.
Entering 2009, in his 12 full years since turning pro, Woods has been shut out of majors in only three years — 1998, 2003 and 2004.
He’s 0-for-2 this year.
The gap between Woods and his nearest competitors has closed significantly, and it makes you wonder if Woods has lost a little something since he burst onto the scene and was squashing everyone around him, or if the top players have caught up to him.
Woods looked vulnerable yesterday against what no one would argue was one of the strongest fields in a PGA Tour event this year.
When it looked like he was about the run away with his own title, he messed up the 11th hole for the fourth consecutive day this week.
His bogey, the third of the week there, coupled with a double on Saturday, brought Hunter Mahan into the picture at the top of the leaderboard with him.
Now Woods, with seven holes to play after his bogey on 11, needed a birdie to win. That seemed inevitable, but it took until the 16th for him to get it.
Maybe our expectations of Woods are unfair. But he set those expectations with his dominance, and that dominance no longer looms as large as it once had.
The story about exactly how human Woods has become will be told in two weeks at the British Open and again in August at the PGA Championship.