If the focus and desire is gone, is it time for Tiger Woods to call it a day?

Knowing when to call time on your career is one of the hardest decisions for a professional sportsman or woman to make.

Leave it too long and you risk tarnishing your legacy with a string of poor, or even downright embarrassing performances which detract from previous medal or title-winning displays.

Leave it too long in sports such as boxing and the danger is also of a physical and far greater nature, with many fighters suffering the long-term consequences of taking on one fight too many.

Leave it too long in golf and you suffer the indignity of being replaced as the star of a computer game by someone who probably grew up playing that very game.

That was the fate of Tiger Woods this week, who was the face of EA Sports’ PGA Tour game for 15 years until 2013, a role now assumed by world number one Rory McIlroy.

In the grand scheme of things it is just a computer game and Woods certainly does not need the money which it brings, but as a symbol of how far Woods has fallen it could hardly be more obvious.

At the start of this week Woods was ranked 87th in the world and is projected to fall outside the top 100 by the time of the Masters if he does not return to action in Texas or Houston in the next fortnight.

The 39-year-old has started just two tournaments in 2015, missing the cut at the Waste Management Phoenix Open after a career-worst 82 and lasting just 11 holes at the Farmers Insurance Open before withdrawing due to more injury problems.

The last of his 14 major wins came in 2008 and his 2014 season was blighted by a back operation which forced him to miss the Masters for the first time in his career, while subsequent injury setbacks resulted in a missed cut at the US PGA and withdrawing from consideration for a Ryder Cup wild card.

Supporters of Woods will point out that the Open Championship was recently won for three years in succession by players in their 40s – Darren Clarke, Ernie Els and Phil Mickelson – and that Jack Nicklaus won the last of his 18 majors at the age of 46.

But none of those players have suffered the same injury problems as Woods, whose back surgery last year was the latest in a long line of problems dating back to a knee operation while at college in 1994.

And then there are the off-course issues, starting with the sex scandal which broke in November 2009 and led to his divorce from the mother of his two children.

“My hunch would be there’s something bigger going on,” 2014 Ryder Cup-winning captain Paul McGinley said last week.

“There’s no doubt Tiger has peaked in terms of when guys normally play their best golf. That doesn’t mean he’s finished, but certainly he is in the back nine of his career.

”It’s not just the wear and tear on your mind and body, having performed at a very high intense level with scrutiny like Tiger’s had for 20 years. It’s mitigating circumstances – he’s got two kids that are growing up and he’s spending more time with them, he’s obviously gone through a divorce and that causes issues too, and he’s in a new relationship (with skier Lindsey Vonn).

”He’s now got some business interests that are going through and designing golf courses that he never did before. So Tiger’s focus and his evolution as a human being have moved on, and maybe that’s one of the reasons why all of a sudden his focus is not here any more.”

That focus and desire to surpass Nicklaus in the record books has been one of the key factors in Woods’ success over the years, but if that has gone, how long before Woods disappears too?