I read a comment from another poster on a different website, thought the gist of his message was worth sharing here because I found it to be fairly salient, especially given that Arnie passed away all of a week or so ago.
"Arnold Palmer didn't just play golf for a living. It ran much deeper than just a career he excelled at. No, Arnie loved golf, loved everything about golf. Golf was his passion. No better example of that could be offered than watching him demo various clubs at a driving range at Bay Hill or Latrobe, long after his playing days were well behind him. Despite all of his achievements, despite anyone understanding the level of humility required of a 70-year-old man to have accomplished all that he did back in his prime, to suddenly finding some means of satisfaction in finding a hybrid club that offered him enough forgiveness to be able to reliably hit it 200 yards, tells you all you need to know about how much Arnie loved playing golf."
What the commenter was ultimately getting at was that Arnold never once led his fans on this on-again, off-again wild goose chase... when Arnold felt he was no longer competitive at that level, he let it be known. That's not to suggest that he shunned occasional ceremonial role type opportunities, but it was more about giving back to the fans and the game than him genuinely feeling competitive. He knew his place in the game, but he also continued to enjoy the challenges it offered him, whether he was showing up ceremoniously at an event, playing with his buddies at the club back home, or going through a bucket of range balls trying to figure out which new club he should thrown in his bag. Arnold just loved to play golf, even when his scores were closer to the 90's than the 70's.
This in no way should be interpreted as demeaning toward Tiger, because that's certainly not the point. But there is a correlation between loving what you do and being good at what you do, and there's also a correlation of those two things to go along with the duration of how long you're still good at doing it.
Several years back Tiger admitted that he stopped playing golf for the love of the game a long time ago. I'm not suggesting that maybe his perceived indifference has played somewhat of a role in his demise over the years, nor am I discounting it either. But it seems fairly obvious that if he can't be competitive enough to win - the game offers him very little else in return, besides his obvious frustrations.
In short, I think Steve's thought about Tiger only loving being dominant carries a lot of weight.