Tiger Woods vows to battle on after another missed major cut at St Andrews

Tiger Woods during the second round of the 2015 Open Championship. Facundo Arrizabalaga / EPA

Tiger Woods has vowed to battle on against the dimming of the light after another desperately disappointing showing at the British Open.

The game’s once predominant force packed his bags and headed for home after finishing seven shots adrift of the cut mark and tied for 147th place out of 156 starters at St Andrews.

That came a month after he slumped out of Chambers Bay and the US Open in a similar gloomy fashion just a month ago.

They are just the latest humiliations in a year that has seen Woods mired in by far the worst slump of a professional career which started 19 years ago.

Woods had sympathetic support from the knowledgeable St Andrews golf fans as he trudged his way off the course late Saturday evening.

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They had cheered, admired and lionised him in 2000 when he won his first Open Championship by a whopping eight strokes, and five years later when he triumphed by five shots at an Old Course he calls his favourite place in the world.

There is much head-shaking and hand-wringing now over the way things have gone.

Woods himself had no real answer as to what he needs to do next, short of sticking to his guns.

“Keep going. Keep going forward,” was all he could offer.

“I play in a couple weeks in (Washington) D.C, so looking forward to playing the Quicken Loans, and hopefully win that event so I can get into a place that I know very well,” he said.

In fact the last time Woods was in that (winning) place was at the 2013 WGC Bridgestone-Invitational at a time when he was still ranked No 1 in the world.

Since then it has gone from bad to worst, first with a succession of injuries and then with changes to his swing pattern that for the moment just do not seem to be working, although he insists that things are heading in the right direction.

Coming into St Andrews he genuinely felt he could win his 15th major title and move to within three of the all-time record held by Jack Nicklaus.

The reality though was very different to his expectations.

“I’m just not scoring. Every opportunity I have to make a key putt or hit an iron shot in there stiff with a short iron and get some momentum going, I haven’t done that,” he said.

“I haven’t gotten anything out of my rounds. I’ll hit good shots, I’ll string together some good shots and good holes and put myself in position to make a run, and I don’t do it.”

Woods at least has one major left to play this year — the PGA Championship at Whistling Straits, Wisconsin next month — to try and save something from the wreckage of a year that also saw him split with longtime girlfriend, champion skier Lindsey Vonn, in May.

Further down the line he will likely have another crack at a St Andrews Open when it next returns to the Old Course in 2020 when he will be pushing 45 years old.

“I’ll probably have less hair then and hopefully a little better game,” he said as he headed for the exit door.

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