An Old Tiger comes out in Shanghai.

c/p from foxsports by
Robert Lusetich.
Updated Nov 4, 2010 5:35 PM ET
Tiger Woods considered taking the year off given his disintegrating life, decided against it, but was effectively absent from golf in 2010, anyway.

His face may have been on the billboards and his name on the tee sheets, but he rarely brought his game, or his heart, to the PGA Tour.

He insisted this week that he never fell out of love with golf. Maybe not, but he'd never loved it less.

Those in the know say he had no appetite for practice, the bedrock of what made him so great. As his life unraveled, he found solace only at the gym.

As the year went on and his woes continued, Woods became, of all things, golf's version of an empty suit — stuck somewhere between exasperation, on a good day, and apathy on a bad one.

There were glimpses of the Old Tiger — that fabulous back nine on Saturday at Pebble Beach, the adrenaline-filled fourth-place finish at Augusta — but they were quickly extinguished; candles in the wind.