"I'm a sex addict," opines Chazz Michael Michaels in the complex world cinema classic Blades of Glory. "It's a real disease with doctors and medicine and everything."

Today, it seems unthinkable that celebrity sex addiction was once misdiagnosed as hot famous millionaires just taking their opportunities, or something that stars claimed when they couldn't handle taking responsibility for being an arsehole, in the same way that Mel Gibson went to rehab for being antisemitic and Naomi Campbell did a spell for hitting the help.

Thank God we've moved on. The sadness, of course, is wondering what undiagnosed sex addicts of more benighted days – your Mick Jaggers, your Warren Beattys – might have achieved had they not had to suffer this affliction in private.

So when Tiger Woods took to his podium last week, he did so not just for himself, but for all those icons of yesteryear who never got to stand up and say "Yes, I had sex with a number of readily available women, and I am continuing with months – months! – of in-patient care to treat this illness".

It's now time to "move on" from Tiger's apology, in the parlance of these things. And yet, for those of us who actually like sport, as opposed to being part of that increasing and increasingly irksome demographic which just tunes in for the kiss-and-tells and apologies, the appearance afforded a worrying glimpse of a formerly near-invincible athlete. Is rehab going to ruin Tiger Woods's game?

I can only hope it was his sponsors Tiger was trying to appease with the display, and not his therapists, because you have to suspect that any medical professional who regards such craven public nonsense as "part of the journey" means nothing less than to dismantle perhaps the greatest golfer ever to have played.

Part of what made Woods such a breathtakingly formidable opponent was his mental impenetrability, and before this whole saga broke there were those who felt he should radically alter his demeanour in order to appease everything from the social mores of the PGA tour to the demands of their editors to their own personal sense of importance. I can't say I was ever one of them. Barring illegality, whatever made him play like that was pretty much OK by me.

Post the exposé, none of us is entitled to think our speculation on his marriage is remotely relevant. If you feel personally "let down" by Woods's behaviour, then you could do with a spell in a head spa yourself. But now that Woods is undergoing a questionably necessary mental rebuild by behavioural therapists, and has made such a deliberate play of involving the world in his "recovery", we are entitled to wonder what sort of golfer will emerge at the end of it all. Will he really be the same? Self-doubt might be a nice quality for a billionaire athlete husband to discover, particularly if he has a lot of spare time away from home on his hands, but it is less of an asset in a would-be major winner.

Listening to Woods describe the new him, it felt like he was being encouraged to shed many of his defining qualities in the cause of his recovery. Ferocious singlemindedness, a lone wolf mentality, immense self-belief – these are not really the kinds of things that therapists wish you to hang on to, but they were the essence of Woods the golfer.

According to his statement, the new Woods has learned to lean on his peers. Yet the open flippancy with which some of them on the PGA tour have been talking about him since the story broke suggests his ability to intimidate them on the course might have been severely compromised by the way it has played out.

New Tiger says it's no longer about what you achieve but "what you overcome", apparently sublimating his sex addiction into the challenge of his career. As Simon Barnes observed in the Times the other day, he seems intent on becoming "the best therapy-undergoer ever".

Wherever you place World Rehab No1 in your list of covetable accolades – I'd stick it above Best Yodeler but below Best Laundry Lint Collector – this sort of shtick doesn't seem to augur belief-defying feats of golf.

I'd genuinely love to be proved wrong. And far be it from me to suggest that the therapists of the Pine Grove Behavioural Health and Addiction Clinic are yips-merchants. But on the basis of last week's horror show, one can dream of staging a reverse intervention and getting Woods the hell out of there before they work any more of their magic.