Tiger is a sex addict. Now usually that wouldn't draw much attention. That is to a normal individual. But our man was challenging King Jack to be the best there ever was. The scrutiny caught up with him as all.
In the grand scheme of things his sins are marginal. Other than those he carries himself well. His interviews are right on point and his understated charisma overflows.
When my thoughts drift his way I always think to myself what if.....
I think the sex addiction issues that blew up in late 2009 hurt him, but not significantly in terms of Jack.
The three biggest issues for Tiger in terms of coming short :
1) Injuries (Pre and Post Sex Blowup)
2) Mental Complex related to constant technical swing changes
3) Field became much stronger around 2012. He was the best golfer in the world by the beginning of 2013 (having won 8 tournaments in 15 months) but he could not capitalize in the majors.
With regards to 1) -- he swung hard. And he started playing a lot and swinging a lot from the age of 3 - he practiced an insane amount from a young age. The wear and tear has to be significant even compared to most pro golfers. He had 2 (3?) major injuries before the sex blowup, and 2 or 3 after that,
With respect to 2) -- he always had this mental flaw to change things even when he was at the top. And if you remember in those years that he made changes he typically struggled for 6-12 months after making those changes. That cost him majors.
And many of those technical swing changes were not done with improving his long term health.
And then you can tie 2) back to 1), because bringing in a new swing required harder practice which given his worsening knee and back issues caused further problems.
I'm not sure if he would have caught Jack anyway given the 3) factor I noted above, but he had some mental flaws around the "technical" swing that hurt him quite a bit.
