Golf: Tiger chases his tail as questions mount over crisis

Of all the extraordinary facts and figures that have attached themselves to the name of Tiger Woods in his phenomenal career one has cropped up this week that, given his fantastic talent, is more extraordinary than most. If Woods fails to win the World Golf Championship at Mount Juliet, near Kilkenny, he will not have a single strokeplay event to defend anywhere in the world.

He ran out of major championships to defend long ago, not having won one since June 2002, but who would ever have thought that it would come to this? Woods, after all, is the man who won two tournaments in the first few months of his professional career in 1996, won four the next season and built up to the years 1999 and 2000 when he won an incredible 17 times in 24 months, setting or equalling 27 US Tour records in the process.