By Jaime Diaz
Photo By Darren Carroll April 2008

Vijay Singh would never show it, but he misses being part of golf's conversation.

Of course, the fortunes of most players have been drowned out by Tiger Woods' domination, and there has been the usual clamoring for Phil Mickelson to make a run. But the biggest reason is the understandable but undeniable decline in Singh's performance since his monumental 2004 season, when he won nine tournaments, set the season money-winning record and became the only player in the new millennium to supplant Woods at No. 1.

Singh has fallen from that great height, especially in the major championships. In the past six majors he has missed three cuts and finished no better than a tie for 13th, and last year he dropped to 13th in the world, his lowest ranking since he was 18th a decade ago.

The consensus is that a 45-year-old professional golfer, no matter how motivated, disciplined, fit and talented, has almost surely seen his best days. Few are making Singh a favorite in this year's Masters, even though he has finished eighth or better in six of his past eight appearances at Augusta.

And as more six-footers run by the hole, Singh looks less and less capable of handling Augusta's greens with the kind of career putting that carried him to the green jacket in 2000.

If Singh minds the silence, or hears the murmurs, he doesn't show it. He's too busy listening to the voice in his head, the one that's disappointed by his play since his last victory, a year ago at Bay Hill. So after missing the cut at the PGA Championship won by Woods, Singh embarked on a bold makeover.

"When I see myself sliding off, I don't like it, and I had to take a hard look at why," says Singh, sipping coffee after his morning workout. "When you're not playing well, your head doesn't function very well. You get in this negative mode, and you start blaming things on people. I think you've got to look in the mirror and figure it out. So I made some changes."

As 2008 opened, Singh was in full renovation, committed to dramatically altering his swing plane so that it resembles Jack Nicklaus' rather than Ben Hogan's. Singh is also switching from the belly putter back to a conventional length and eschewing his left-hand low grip. Departed from Team Singh are caddie Paul Tesori and close friend and trainer Joey Diovisalvi. They have been replaced by Chad Reynolds, formerly the looper for Singh's regular practice-round partner, Tom Pernice, and Jeffrey Fronk, formerly an assistant with the Jacksonville Jaguars and New York Jets. Both personnel changes were based in large part on the willingness of the replacements to dedicate even more time to Singh.

"The changes have been a little hard because Paul and Joey went through a lot with me, but I want that feeling of winning back," says Singh, who ended 2007 with a victory in Korea and a second in Singapore before a playoff loss at Pebble Beach followed indifferent results earlier this year. "It hasn't shown up yet, but it will come. I believe I can beat everybody out there. I know that."

Upon reflection, Singh's self-assessment doesn't sound any less plausible than a guy from the archi-pelago of Fiji becoming the No. 1 golfer in the world. And after watching a slimmed-down Singh (215 pounds, from 227, at 6-feet-2) hit balls with the sound and force that make other pros stop and look up, it occurs that there might be other reasons Vijay has been dropped from the conversation.

Even with 31 PGA Tour victories (a record 19 of them achieved after turning 40), including three majors and induction into the World Golf Hall of Fame, Singh in some minds will remain the one who was suspended from the Asian Tour in 1985 for allegedly altering his signed scorecard -- a charge Singh has always denied -- and who, in 2003, became a talk-radio punching bag by candidly but clumsily speaking out against Annika Sorenstam accepting a sponsor's exemption to play at Colonial.

Wounded by the accusations and criticism, Singh has made himself easy to ignore by keeping a wary distance from the media -- going to press tents for group interviews only when he is the defending champion, in the lead or tied at the end of a round, or after winning -- the minimum of what the tour asks. He regularly declines other requests for interviews. It made for particular awkwardness when he was No. 1, but the lack of coverage of his decline seems almost by mutual consent. For his part, Singh is used to keeping his own counsel and stoically hiding scars. He once characterized his upbringing in a large but not close family by saying, "I wasn't alone, but I was lonely." Courting favor is not in his makeup, and -- as he made clear in a rare one-on-one interview -- public attention is something he endures more than he enjoys.

"I mostly keep to myself, and maybe people get the wrong idea," he says. "You know, there are eyes on you all the time. Not only is it the 4½ hours that we actually play golf, but before and after, so it ends up being a seven- or eight-hour day where people are watching you. Sometimes TV's watching you. When you go to dinner, even if they're not watching you, you feel like they're watching you. You're on watch all the time. So you have to almost put yourself in a cocoon.

"People see that side of me and think it's wrong, I just don't mind that. Because they don't know any better. If I let that bother me, then I'm the loser. In my heart I know what kind of person I am, and that's good enough."

Singh says those concluding words with the assurance and pride of the self-made man. They're the same qualities he projects when he strides onto his personal kingdom, the practice ground. More than a decade ago, longtime Fuzzy Zoeller caddie Cayce Kerr took in Singh's cool aura, imposing physical gifts and strong will and called out, "Big Daddy from Cincinnati," and Singh has remained Big Daddy ever since. Watching him go through his bag -- creating a divot pattern that leaves six-foot-long trenches with edges so straight they look like they were traced by a yard tool -- it's obvious he takes satisfaction in a thing done well.