We now sympathize with Tiger as he gets his glutes kicked

Glutes need to be activated.

Who knew?

Maybe that’s what the wife is always screaming about when I settle in for a day of college basketball viewing on the recliner and the yard needs tending.

She just uses a word other than glutes.

It has come to this pitiful reality for Tiger Woods, that the greatest golfer of his generation and perhaps any, whose presence when dominating for more than a decade caused a globalization of the sport not seen before or since, whose effect on the game led to an implausible skill level in others across the world, stands before reporters Thursday at Torrey Pines Golf Course in San Diego and explains his monumental struggles as this:

He couldn’t get his butt to cooperate.

Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse for Woods, worse than that career-high 82 at the Waste Management Open in Phoenix last week, worse than those shots seen more by a weekend hacker on a municipal course than a 14-time majors winner on a PGA Tour track, his ailing back flares up again and he is forced to withdraw after 11 holes of his second event of the season.

It appears a lengthy fog delay that pushed back the start of his opening round more than two hours at the Farmers Insurance Open wasn’t the best medicine.

“It just never loosened back up,” Woods said. “And when we went back out, it just got progressively tighter. It’s frustrating that it started shutting down like that. I was ready to go. I had a good warm-up session the first time around. Then we stood out here and I got cold, and everything started deactivating again. And it’s frustrating that I just can’t stay activated. That’s just kind of the way it is.

“My glutes are shutting off. If they don’t activate then, hence, it goes to my lower back. I tried to activate my glutes as best I can.”

So here’s the thing: It’s not just his glutes.

They appeared fine in Phoenix, where Woods missed the cut after rounds of 73 and 82. He finished tied for second to last behind Justin Hicks, who reportedly withdrew during the second round because his horrible game was beginning to be a pain in his rear and not because he couldn’t get his activated.

Whether it’s his new swing (the one after the last new swing and the one before the next new swing) or that his 39-year-old body can’t stop breaking down or that the player who once made peers shake in their spikes at his mere presence now has the confidence of an amateur facing his first tee shot in front of a packed gallery at the Masters, Woods isn’t the same and never will be again.

In the past 502 days, he has finished a final round in an official PGA Tour event twice.

Which has created a definite but peculiar truth: People don’t dislike him as much anymore as they sympathize with him.

Yep. Hell has become a little colder today.

We feel sorry for Tiger Woods.

The robot has become more human as his game has become more frightening to watch. He is older, weaker, more vulnerable with each shank. The greatest short game in history has vanished, leaving those with 20-plus handicaps able to relate far more to Woods as a player than ever thought imaginable.

“I’ve said it for eight years since he beat my butt at Torrey Pines in a (U.S. Open playoff),” Rocco Mediate told reporters this week. “The shots coming off this man’s golf club never happened before.”

We feel sorry for Woods because we know that he doesn’t just move the needle in golf.

He is the needle.

It’s true names such as Phil Mickelson and Rory McIlroy and Bubba Watson and Sergio Garcia and Adam Scott (well, at least the latter in my house when the wife and daughter are in the vicinity of a TV) can draw interest and eyeballs when in contention on a particular weekend, but no one influences crowds and sponsorships and ratings like Woods.

Even now. Even today.

Even in this time of Glutes-ville, just two seasons removed from Woods winning five tournaments and being named Player of the Year.

Fellow pros will defend him publicly because they know who means as much to their wallets as anyone else. Fans of Woods are certain this is a momentary blip on a screen that eventually will conclude with him winning more majors and resuming his chase of breaking Jack Nicklaus’ record of 18. Those who have spent years hating Woods, be it for his incredible success or the infidelity scandal that rocked his personal life or examples of suspected cheating on the course or an even greater suspicion of using performance-enhancing drugs off it, now offer a more compassionate tone to their loathing for him.

It’s a wild, crazy, surreal scene.

It’s not yet Muhammad Ali losing to Trevor Berbick, or Brett Favre becoming increasingly worse as the years passed, or Rickey Henderson spending time with various independent teams in the minor leagues, or Michael Jordan and those embarrassing seasons in Washington, but this isn’t the Tiger who once generated as clear a line between those who cheered and booed him as any athlete in history.

Now, there is a middle ground.

One of sympathy and, yes, pity.

Hell has become a little colder today.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ed Graney can be reached at egraney@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4618. He can be heard from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday through Friday on “Gridlock,” ESPN 1100 and 100.9 FM. Follow him on Twitter: @edgraney.