The Front Row with Jim Litke August 16, 2011

JOHNS CREEK, Ga. - The kid standing behind 15-year-old Tiger Woods on the tee at Torrey Pines was two years older and already a hotshot himself on Southern California's rough-and-tumble amateur golf circuit the first time he saw the look.

Chris Riley had played the skinny teenager with the growing reputation a dozen times before. This time, he was 2-up with seven holes to play in the prestigious Junior World Championship.

"We were at No. 12, a long par 4 and I'd already hit mine 260 yards. He smoked his 310, straight down the middle, then turned around and shot me this little smile. He was just fearless," Riley recalled some 20 years later. "He already knew he had me."

Riley first met Woods when he was 10. He beat him to the pro tour in 1996 by a few months. Soon enough, though, every other player on the PGA Tour knew exactly what that look meant.

Mired in the second year of the deepest slump of his career, Woods didn't scare anyone at last week's PGA Championship. He looked lost, not fearless.

Not many superstars in the world of sports and entertainment have fallen so far so fast. Woods was knocked off his throne by a self-inflicted sex scandal that erupted at Thanksgiving in 2009 and cost him his marriage. He was quickly - and unceremoniously - dumped by sponsors and humiliated by the same TV shows and newspapers that once begged for interviews.

Woods went into exile, finally returning to golf in April 2010 at the Masters with a fourth-place finish. He has been steadily losing ground in the golf rankings ever since.

Some believe he will never be that indomitable player again; others, including a few who know Woods better, say it's crazy to count him out.

"He's always been the best. His dad drilled that into him," Riley said, "But this has got to be the lowest point of his career. Nobody has ever seen him do the stuff he's doing now. It hurts to see it. Honestly, I don't know that he's ever had to struggle.

"But I guarantee you this: He'll be back on top. And when he is," Riley paused, "it's going to be that much sweeter."

Speculation about Woods' erratic play the past two seasons zeroed in on his psyche initially. From there, the blame shifted onto his work-in-progress swing and then the very real problem with his legs.

"He was the most mentally and emotionally tough athlete of all time, so here's the question I'm interested in," said sports psychologist Gregg Steinberg, who was a swing instructor earlier in his career. "Why did Tiger play last week if any or all of those problems were bothering him, or if - as the results suggest - he knew he wasn't ready?

"Maybe he thought he could catch lightning in a bottle. That's one guess. The other would be he wanted to measure himself. ... The secret to being great is self-awareness and so whether that was his intention or not," Steinberg added, "he definitely knows now that he needs a good butt-kicking."