Online Gambling Patrons Wonder If Tiger Woods Divorce Will Help or Hinder Him

For almost a year, Tiger Woods has been in free-fall from his status as the world’s greatest golfer and one of online gambling’s most sure things. Since his midnight fight with wife Elin over the discovery of marital infidelity, Woods has endured public humiliation, a forced absence from the game, and a return that seems more Clark Kent than the Superman of the past decade.

This week, Tiger Woods and Elin Nordegren were declared officially divorced in a Florida courtroom. Now, sports betting fans will be wondering whether the legal ending of the marriage will free Tiger to focus upon his golf game once more… or whether he will continue his spiral into mediocrity that has left him closer to missing the cuts than claiming titles.

Once the automatic favorite against the entire remaining field, Tiger now faces not making the US Ryder Cup team simply because he might not be among that country’s twelve best golfers, a statement which would have seemed unthinkable when he won the US Open on a broken leg 18 months ago.

Tiger’s history of dominance and established brand have kept him at the top of gambling favorites at online betting sites for most of this year, but failure after failure have eroded that support. Now, after so dishonoring the mother of his children that she neither looked at nor spoke to him while accepting her payout of upwards of $100 million, can Tiger cleanse his thoughts of his recent past and recover his golf game?

With finishes like 28th a few weeks ago at the PGA Championship, and 23rd at the British Open, Tiger has more to prove than ever before in his carefully-scripted life, and the designers seem to have disappeared.