Jack Nicklaus turned seventy last week. A special birthday for a very, very special sportsman was appropriately marked on PGATour.Com with a series of tributes.

Amongst them were essays by some of his contemporaries, including Arnold Palmer and Tom Watson.

Unsurprisingly their words were only of the highest praise. They spoke of the desire, the passion the competitiveness of the Golden Bear. And of the friendship they shared.

They might also, were he to read them, offer Tiger Woods with an insight into what he has endangered and yet what he might still one day have if he can come through the self-inflicted trials and tribulations that threaten to kill his career in its prime.

Many already believe that it is already all over for him.  That he will never recover from his humiliations and that even if he does actually return he can never be what he was before and in some senses that has to be correct.

The aura and invincibility are already gone. He gloried in being, apparently, perfect, using his image to consume his fellow competitors.

He no longer has such weapons and the longer he stays away the longer it will take him to get back what he so often described as his A game back. If he ever does.

But were he to examine what Palmer and Watson say not just about Nicklaus, but about the game of golf, about being a human being and, most poignantly about family maybe he can make himself a champion again – at least as a person.

The Sinful Number One has, reportedly, been attending a sex rehab clinic. I have no idea what might go on inside one of those establishments – smartypants might suggest the first advice would be to keep it in your trousers.

Whatever the treatment administered to him he can also help himself, and analysing and understanding what Palmer and Watson say about Nicklaus and why might be the kind of self-help that could save him.

Palmer wrote: “Jack Nicklaus and I have been very good friends for 50 years, from the time he arrived on the national tournament scene in the early 1960s and began to build the most impressive record in the history of golf.

“ If anything has distinguished our association over that half century, it has been our competitiveness.

“It was not just our desire to be the winner every time we faced each other in a golf tournament in our golden years. We often were rivals in business endeavours, golf and otherwise.

“This was particularly true in the golf course architecture businesses we built from scratch into top-level firms in the field. Certainly, we had differing philosophies about the designs of our golf course projects.

“One thing, though, through it all, Jack and I have been of one mind and pursuit with regard to expanding and protecting the integrity, the dignity and the traditions of our great game.

“ Because of the success we enjoyed in those earlier years, we were generally recognized and looked upon as the faces of the game, the role models for our fellow players and, more importantly, for the millions of golfers world-wide.

“We didn't have to cultivate this love and respect for the game.

“ It came just as naturally to Jack as it did for me and I know that he and I both nurture the hope and belief that there are those coming behind us who share our convictions and will take up the task of leading the game to greater glory and carry on its noble traditions in the years to come.”

“Happy 70th birthday, old friend. “

Watson is just as effusive, declaring:   “Jack is my friend and competitor. I have learned a great deal from him in terms of both golf and life. Better than anyone else I've ever seen in golf, Jack had the amazing ability to hit the proper shot, at the proper time, under the proper conditions.

“In our advancing years what strikes me most about Jack is how he has remained full of youth in everything he does.

“Most of the credit of course goes to his family and how they all keep him young, especially the rock, his wife Barbara.

“Together they live a full life of kids and more kids, more than a regulation football game when all are counted.

“When all is said and done about Jack, his most lasting legacy will not be his 20 major championships, but the wonderful memories of being a loving father, grandfather, and husband.

“That is the best legacy one can ever have.”

Watson’s contribution, especially, should be noted by Woods who, we all know by now, is surveying not only the potential devastation of his career but also the wreckage of his marriage.

Voyeurism is not something normally associated with golf. But Woods, since he backed into that fire hydrant and it all came out, has been the subject of it ever since and it has not been a pretty sight.

He may deserve some of the treatment he has had in the media. He wasn’t just living a lie at home. He was also doing so in public. He cheated on his fans, too.

So no excuses. But he’s doing his time. He is behind his own kind of bars and the sentence is severe.

It’s a life sentence, in fact, because nobody is ever going to forget and many will never, ever forgive. And that, likely enough, is liable to include Woods himself.

This week in San Diego it is being pointed out that Tiger’s not around. That’s about as newsworthy as noting that day follows night.

Of course he’s not around. He’s a wounded animal and the hurting could still prove terminal.

He could be gone for a year and really, does anyone actually see him standing under the Stars and Stripes with hand on heart as the American national anthem is played at Celtic Manor? It would all, surely, be too much.

When, or at least if, he comes back, however, I’d like to think that he comes back not just a different man because that is already a given – but that he emerges from his lair as a much better one who doesn’t just pay lip service to the game but ensures that one day people will talk about him in the same way they are currently discussing the greatness of Nicklaus.

Tiger never really did humility. He talked about it and paid his tributes to Nicklaus, especially, but we all believed that deep down, his pursuit of that 18-Major record had turned him into a cold-blooded killer who only smiled for the camera, not in his soul.

They may never be able, down the line, to talk about Woods the way they are talking about Nicklaus because he made too many enemies on the way up to expect much sympathy now or later.

If they don’t, then so be it. But I would like to think that when he reaches seventy Tiger Woods will be able to look back on all of this and know that he came through for himself and for golf and for his family.

He is now fighting for the most important Major of the lot. His pride.

And if he is prepared to go into battle for that then he not only deserves time out for good behaviour from the life sentence he is now serving. He also deserves another chance. I hope he is given one.