Tony Schwartz talks about some of the things that seperates elite performers from the merely very good in his book The Power of Full Engagement (HBR article here: http://hbr.harvardbusiness.org/2001/01/the-making-of-a-corpo... ) One of the points he makes is that the very elite (he studied tennis players particularly) have rituals that they perform that allow them to reocover, refocus, and rest very efficiently. And that the more often an athlete stretches themselves physically or mentally beyond their own limits and relies on these rituals to help them succeed, the more powerful and effective the rituals become. So even without accounting for players changing their own playing style because of Tiger, they may suffer from impaired performance because they are simply not as practiced at performing at a high level within the crazy media and fan circus that surrounds Tiger Woods as Tiger Woods himself is. He clearly has developed and repeatedly stressed and practiced those rituals of performance within that environment far more than any one else has had chance to.
Schwartz goes on to relate this to performance as a "Corporate Athlete" but his tips have far more applicability in my mind to the startup environment than to the typical corporate environment.