The longer Tiger Woods stays away, the more the tide turns against him. The next trend in media opinion columns will be predictions that Tiger can't--or won't--break the Jack Nicklaus mark of 18 professional major championships.

At the cutting edge of what's to come, Bill Livingston of the Cleveland Plain-Dealer doesn't flat-out state that Tiger won't get Jack's record,  but he admits to considering the possibility that now it may not happen. Mostly, he compares Tiger's legacy to Jack's and finds Tiger coming up short in all ways.

Golf has seen a lot of "next Jacks" who weren't. Clearly, Tiger Woods isn't Jack Nicklaus either.

It is clear, if little else is, that he is no longer almost sure to break Nicklaus' record of 18 major professional championships. The factors the older players always brought up--serious injury, personal loss, marriage--got him.

After Woods limped to a 19-hole playoff victory at the 2008 U.S. Open over Rocco Mediate on a wrecked left knee, I speculated that his greatest triumph might also pose the greatest threat to his career-long quest to pass Nicklaus. That would be particularly likely if Woods continued to test his soon-to-be-repaired knee with his hurricane-force swing. Woods didn't win a major last year, even failing in the PGA Championship to hold a fourth-round lead in a major for the first time in his career. Nor did he seem to cut down the velocity of his swing dramatically.

While Tiger might still surpass Jack's record for major wins, he'll never match Nicklaus' standard off the course. Ever since Thanksgiving night, we've also seen what a sham his marriage was.

Nicklaus met the media in good times and bad, after family traumas and after great triumphs... He is 70 years old now, married to the same woman for 50 years this July, all without a whiff of scandal. In his prime, he would fly home with the lead in tournaments to see his kids' games, then fly back.

Another Jack? You're away, Tiger. Way away.

Livingston, I presume, also earns bonus points for describing the scene at Tiger's televised statement when one of the two television cameras went out and the other was pointed at the audience.

It was like dropping in on the mannequins storeroom at JCPenney. Vacant expressions all around... Tim Finchem, the PGA Tour commissioner, was there, playing the part of Howdy Doody to Tiger's Buffalo Bob Smith.

It's an outdated reference, sure, from a 1950s-era show, but he's definitely the first to put Finchem's name in the same sentence as Howdy Doody's.