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Lurking presence of T. Woods reminds Els who the real number one is...

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Latest defeat to Woods could spell beginning of the end for The Big Easy, says Bill Elliott

Sometimes it does not take a lunging blow from a large sword to see a man off; sometimes it is the small cuts and nicks that cause mortal pain. So it would now appear to be the case with Ernie Els.

The big man is still ranked fourth in the world, is still a golfer of easy talent and deep commitment but the other fact is that what happened to Els in Dubai last week may be seen ultimately as the tipping point in a career that, to this point, remains tantalisingly close to what it could and should have been.

Ernie is in India this weekend as the European Tour presents its first proper tournament on the sub-continent. Correction: The physical Els is in Delhi but the big suspicion is that his heart and soul is elsewhere and that this is not a good place for these important bits to be.

What happened to Els was that yet again Tiger Woods placed his foot firmly on the South African's neck. This has occurred many times over the last decade but somehow the way Woods won in Dubai and the manner by which Els surrendered a lead that should have secured him at least a play-off against The Man Who Won't Go Away seems disconcertingly conclusive.

For the last several years Els has devoted himself to catching up with Woods. He has tried eyeballing him, tried politely ignoring him, tried swing changes and fitness regimes, diet and psychology. Occasionally some of these strategies have appeared to be close to working but now everything is once again ripped apart.

The line between success and failure at the top of any sport is a delicate one. It is partly physical but it is mostly mental. The reason blokes become the best in the world at any game is rooted in the weird fact that at some point they actually took the long-term decision that, yes, they actually COULD be the big cheese.

This, of course, is different to the rest of us who maybe once dreamt of being tops in something but who never really believed anything like that was possible. Well, Ernie did become the best golfer on the planet and seemed destined to remain that way for some considerable time. Except that then the other guy came along.

What is out there for Ernie now is the hardest ever test of his ambition. He admits that he has maybe "four or five years left to continue competing at the top level" but he insists that he is "in better shape than when I was in my twenties" and, of course, he believes that he is "close to being really ready again".

Those of us who have enjoyed not just his golf but his company over the last decade hope he is making a careful judgement on all this rather than declaring an act of blind faith. Whatever the truth here the indisputable fact is that the statistics tell a worrying story. In golf these stats can confuse as much as they illuminate but the really relevant one after you scrape all the bullshit aside is the category marked stroke average.

It is here that Els is wounded for his present average that is hovering around 70 shots per round is more than a stroke worse than a couple of years ago. In this game this decline is close to terminal for when a golfer adds four or more shots to his 72 hole total he drops from a contender to a top 20 man. Until now, Els never has been a top 20 man and this is the really unsettling thought as he approaches the rest of his career. This, and the continuing, annoying presence of Mr T. Woods.

* Els this morning opened his Indian Masters bid - for which he was matched at a low of [3.85] pre-tournament - with a 75, which included a quadruple bogey 9 at the 18th.