Kohjiro Kinno/SI

For much of 2010, all eyes were on Tiger Woods as he lost his No. 1 ranking during a winless, scandal-plagued season.

Golf took a hit in 2010. There is no other way to say it.

The game, which finally became cool sometime in the mid-1990s thanks to the likes of Michael Jordan, Greg Norman, Kevin Costner, Tiger Woods and assorted rock-stars-turned-golf-junkies, officially became uncool.

You can blame the economy. You can blame Tiger's fall from grace. You can blame the game's inherent issues—it takes too long to play, it costs too much and it's too difficult.

Golf legend Jack Nicklaus summed it up for a lot of people in March when he admitted to Golfweek, "I don't watch golf on TV. It's like watching paint dry." Thanks for the ringing endorsement, G-Bear.

Even "Dilbert," known for having his finger on the pulse of the workaday nation, piled on. In one strip, Wally, the official office slacker, declared: "I'm no longer content to be useless at work. I decided to take up golf so I can be useless on weekends, too." In another strip, a pointy-haired employee offered this explanation for not paying attention to a superior's query: "I was brain-golfing."

An appearance as the milieu for an episode of "CSI" that included cameos by pro golfers Rocco Mediate, Duffy Waldorf and Natalie Gulbis didn't help. In fact, it was probably just another nail in the coffin, proof that golf was as passé as "CSI," a former No. 1-rated show that has lost its edge. (The culprit, by the way, wasn't one of the golf pros. It was the murder victim himself, killed when he threw a tantrum, broke his club and the jagged edge of the shaft sliced open an artery.)

Golf also had the Kongzilla of all distractions, the Tiger scandal that fueled gossip headlines and late-night talk show punchlines. It was such a bad year in golf that the game's most-watched moment was Tiger's mea culpa speech in February.

Even journeyman golfer Jay Williamson told The New York Times after Tiger's speech, "I kept waiting for him to say, Live from New York, it's Saturday night!"

Thanks to Tiger, golf became a sport to make fun of (along with the almost-too-easy target of sex addiction), and "South Park" went all in. Cartman and friends played the new Tiger Woods Xbox 360 game, in which Tiger loses an endorsement after each mis-hit shot, and harpooned an array of celebs that included David Letterman, Charlie Sheen, Bill Clinton and David Duchovny.

It took six full months for us to get any distance from Tiger and the scandal, and even then he was never far away. His divorce was finalized and his hostess ex-girlfriend, Rachel Uchitel, turned up on TV's "Celebrity Rehab." Even while doing promotional appearances for the show, however, she wouldn't dish on Woods or admit that her relationship with him was relevant. The confidentiality agreement she reportedly signed before canceling a scheduled press conference with heavy-hitter lawyer Gloria Allred may have been money well spent by Tiger's camp.

It was the first time since he turned pro that Tiger didn't win a tournament somewhere in the world. Perhaps fittingly, he had a chance to do so in the Chevron World Challenge, an event he hosts, but U.S. Open champ Graeme McDowell did to Tiger what Tiger routinely used to do to everyone else: he holed two long putts to snatch away the victory.

Golf won't be any less Tiger-centric in 2011 as we'll now be forced to watch as Tiger officially morphs into a comeback story. If you don't think that's going to happen, you don't understand the media.

It was a messy year from start to finish. The most memorable moments seemed to be screw-ups, not victories. Dustin Johnson's bonehead bunker moment at the PGA Championship sadly overshadowed Martin Kaymer's breakthrough win. I have to believe Johnson just blanked out and somehow didn't notice he was in a bunker, although when I played Whistling Straits the next day, I didn't see how anyone could make that mistake.

At the Ryder Cup, someone told me, "If only Stewart Cink had missed that putt at Turnberry and made those two short putts at the end of his singles match, everyone would be a lot happier." In that case, Tom Watson would've won the '09 British Open, and the U.S. would've retained the Ryder Cup. While Hunter Mahan was the American whose lost point gave Europe the Cup, Cink's pair of missed five-footers might have been more important.

You probably don't remember any shots played in the final U.S. Open round by McDowell, other than his two putts for par on the 18th green. But you probably remember in vivid detail Johnson's final-round meltdown with a three-shot lead—the left-handed chip and subsequent fluffed shot that led to the triple bogey on the second hole and his final-round 82.

You definitely don't remember the Open runner-up. Ernie Els? Nope. Phil Mickelson? Not quite. Tiger? He was famously fourth. Golf's forgotten second place finisher was Gregory Havret, a Frenchman few Americans had heard of before he lost the Open by a single stroke. Now go forth to sports bars with this bit of trivia, people, and multiply.