Justin Verlander has become baseball’s Tiger Woods. When he was at the top of his game,  Verlander was the Cy Young and MYP. When Tiger Woods was at the top of his game, he left the field in a trail of dust. Now, both are shells of themselves.

The paths the two took there have both similarities and differences. Tiger Woods won his first of 14 majors in 1997, won the PGA Player of the Year Award in 1997, 1999-2003, 2005-2007, 2009, and 2013, and was a consistent major winner through 2008. The Tigers right-hander arrived on the scene for his first full season in 2006, was an all-star in 2007 and 2009-2013, and won the Cy Young and MVP in 2011.

When he was at the top of his game, Woods won at least five tournaments per year with double digit top-10 finishes. Woods won three tournaments in 2012 and five in 2013, but has not won one tournament since the beginning of 2014 with only two top-25 finishes. Verlander had an ERA under 3.50 every season from 2009-2013, but had not been under 4.50 since.

Verlander did not have the same sharp downturn based off of one event like Tiger Woods after Thanksgiving of 2009, but both have had their share of injuries that have led to their downfalls. Tiger Woods ruptured his ACL in 2007, suffered knee injuries in 2008, injured his Achilles once again in 2011 and 2012, had back spasms in 2013, and still had a tight back in 2014.

Over the past two seasons, Verlander dealt with a core muscle injury, which hampered his entire 2014 season and strained triceps, which cost him the first half of the 2015 season. Now that he has returned and is completely healthy, Verlander has the velocity that he would have without an injury, but the results have not followed.

Woods and Verlander even sound the same after their performances. After his seven run outing against the Toronto Blue Jays, Verlander said, “There’s two ways that you can approach this: you can look at the fifth inning and think negatively or you can look at the rest of it and look positively, and I’m not one to think negatively. I was really pleased with my stuff.”

After his British Open performance this weekend, Woods said, “I hit the ball solid. It’s just that it wasn’t getting through the wind. I don’t know what was causing that, and it’s something that we’re going to have to take a look at, look at my numbers, see if the spin rates are on or not, but it was so frustrating because all my shots that I hit solid and flush into the wind, they just weren’t carrying at all.”

Both still believe they had the ability to perform at the top of their game and be viable threats to win tournaments or shut down opposing starting lineups. They have faith from their fan bases that they could return to form and impose their will, but they have not shown signs of life to get back to the tops of their games.

Golf has seen the end of an era in the fall of Tiger Woods, and the Tigers have seen the end of an era in the fall of Justin Verlander.