After five years and four weeks, it finally happened.
On Tuesday morning, Tiger Woods woke up to find he was no longer ranked as the best golfer in the world.
Hardly disastrous, you might think, especially as he has only fallen as far as the number two spot and has trousered almost $5m in tour earnings alone this year.
It's the sort of slump that most players would give their entire back catalogue of Pringle jumpers for.
But Tiger has never been your average golfer. And the standards by which he is judged are as unique as his talent.
Which means, strange as it may sound, that Tiger is in crisis.
He denies it, of course. "I'm excited about what I'm working on," he says. "I can't wait to get playing again."
Which may be true. But the stats from his last five seasons tell a stark story of a golfer in decline - particularly off the tee.
Woods' driving accuracy has never been his strongest attribute. But in the last few seasons it has fallen away dramatically.
In 1999, 71% of his tee shots landed safely on the fairway. This season, not much more than half of them have.
Tiger, dominant overall for so long, is struggling so badly from the tee that he is ranked a lowly 176th on driving accuracy on the PGA Tour.
What has kept him alive is a wondrous short game. He takes an average of 1.722 putts per hole, better than anyone else on the tour.
If he was anywhere near his old form off the tee, he would be as imperious as he was in 2001 and 2002.
Instead, he is dropping away - only slightly, but enough to allow the rest of the tour to have him in their sights again.
The man who won six of the 10 Majors after the 1999 USPGA has now not won one of the big four in his last 10 attempts.
In each of the three seasons from 2001 to 2003, he won five tournaments. Since taking the WCG American Express Championships last year, he has won only once.
Why? Because the Tiger of 2004 is not the same person as the Tiger of a few years back.
Physically, he has changed, adding muscle to his upper body to the extent that some critics feel his swing has become tighter and less whippy.
He has fallen in love with something else apart from golf, namely his fianc�e, Elin Nordegren, although the whispers from tour insiders are that the relationship may not be solid as it once was.
And he has lost the aura of invincibility that once intimidated his rivals so much that many were beaten before a shot had been played.
It was once the case that, if you were paired with Woods on a final round, your challenge was effectively neutered.
 Woods got engaged to Elin Nordegren in December 2003 |
Not any more, as Vijay Singh's performance at the Deutsche Bank Championship on Monday demonstrated.
Says Padraig Harrington: "Before, there was the attitude that you had to play really well to beat Tiger.
"But now players are taking the attitude: 'Well, I'll just play my own game and let him play well if he wants to beat me'.
"They are putting the emphasis back on Tiger, whereas before Tiger had the emphasis on the opposition. He's not used to that situation."
Woods' decline coincides with his split from coach Butch Harmon, the man who redesigned Tiger's swing after he won his first Major at the 1997 Masters.
'Coincides' is the key word, for while Tiger feels he can solve his problems unaided, others are not so sure.
"He is not working on the right things in his golf swing, although obviously Tiger thinks he is," said Harmon earlier this summer.
"He should have felt, 'I could win this tournament by six, seven, eight shots'. That was the old Tiger Woods.
"But for him to stand there at every one of his interviews and say, 'I am close, I feel really good about what I am doing', I think it might be a bit of denial."
Woods hit back, saying: "Obviously he doesn't really know what I'm working on."
But the evidence that something is amiss is clear.
In 2000, Tiger was averaging 67.79 shots per round. This year, he's up to 69.21.
It might not sound like much, but it equates to nearly six shots per tournament.
And that, even to a genius like Woods, is enough to bring him back into the ranks of the mortals.
MMIX
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