Was it the architecture, the setup or the golfer?

[George Pazin]

[Apologies in advance for those annoyed that I will be using Tiger in this example. Fwiw, I think you could drop Rory into the question and it wouldn't change greatly, but we don't have the body of evidence to place Rory's results into context.]

Looking at Tiger's results this year, he has had, for him, an uncharacteristically inconsistent year thus far: a couple dominant wins, a couple embarrassing MCs and a couple mediocre results in the two majors.

Obviously the results are a combination of the three things asked in the title, but I'm wondering what others think may be the dominant reason:

Have the designs had the greatest impact?

Has it been the more extreme conditions in the majors? Firm and fast conditions placing a premium on thought and execution?

Or are the varying results simply what you'd expect from Tiger right now? Or any other tour pro?

[Jason Thurman]

Let's just look at the US Open. We saw Fantastic Tiger, Grinding and Tough Tiger, Mediocre Tiger, and Terrible Tiger all in the course of four rounds on the same course with essentially the same course.

It's clearly the golfer. He's still assimillating swing changes and still hot and cold with the putter. I do think he's coming together quickly at this point though, and would expect him to contend again in a month.

[Matt Kardash]

The golfer. I think we are experiencing that Tiger Woods is not super human anymore. He is just a Top 10 golfer right now like any other.

[Phil McDade]

George:

Good question -- my thought is that the set-up at Olympic wasn't great for Tiger in terms of where his game is right now. When it's under control, he's as good as anyone out there -- thus tied for the lead halfway through the Open. But Olympic appeared to be a course (and appropriately so, in my view, for this championship) that was quite penal with slight misses or miscalculations, and those are still part of Tiger's game. He's simply not as consistent, in all facets of his game, as he has been in the past. I think he can get away with that at some courses, that are more conducive to recovery shots and where he has the ability to make up ground after a bad run of holes. Olympic in particular seemed to be a pretty long grind, and rewarded consistent play without those penalizing miss-hits.

To me, the tournament turned on three shots -- Furyk's tee shot (a really bad miss severely penalized, not unlike Mickelson at 18 at WFoot); Els' approach to a somewhat sucker pin on 16 that he chased, and just missed, sending his ball into the run-off area; and Simpson's 3rd shot at 18 from a bad lie around the green. Two of those shots resulted in bogey; one in a par, and the par essentially won the tournament.

Tiger was pretty much undone by his play at Olympic's very tough opening of six holes -- E the first two days, +9 on the weekend. Simpson played the first 6 holes +4 on Th/Fri, then E par on the weekend. In short, Simpson avoided during that crucial stretch of holes what Tiger encountered. To me, Tiger looked like he "thought" his way around the course extremely well the first two days, but didn't execute his way around the course on the weekend. That's the mark, to me, of an inconsistent player who doesn't quite have his game back yet.

[Adam Clayman]

My vote is for the golfer's 5 inches. Eldrick, has lost some confidence under pressure. Proving he's human. We saw it happen to Furyk, yesterday. The clearest and most recent example, albeit slightly different because it was caused by fatigue, was Jason Dufner's final six holes on Sunday, about a month ago, at the end of his amazing month of playing great golf. Might as well call it "Elvis" cause once it leaves the building, it's hard to get it back.

[Randy Thompson]

The golfer... and a lot relates to his confidence, we recently have saw Tiger put together six consective solid rounds where he showed his skills of the past of a dominant player in the world and then we saw the scrambling Tiger showing that he is still on the rebound from a lot physical and mental problems. Olympic is a great course, IMO one of the principal reasons is the flexibility in the set up that it allows. I think the USGA can pretty much target what they want the winning score to be and set the course up accordingly. I think the course has the potential to be a blood bath and they could set it up where seven to ten over could be the winning score.  A good course and set up also seems to allow the cream to rise to the top. A lot of cream was at the the top but Simpson slipped in there and rose and looking back on his past statistics one would conclude...no way..not on that course. Would love to know how Jay F, felt on Friday he would win?

[Garland Bayley]

My vote is for the golfer's 5 inches. Eldrick, has lost some confidence under pressure. Proving he's human. We saw it happen to Furyk, yesterday. The clearest and most recent example, albeit slightly different because it was caused by fatigue, was Jason Dufner's final six holes on Sunday, about a month ago, at the end of his amazing month of playing great golf. Might as well call it "Elvis" cause once it leaves the building, it's hard to get it back.

+1

[George Pazin]

To quote John McLaughlin, WRONG!

I actually think it's mostly the architecture. Tiger didn't change much from those dominant wins to the following majors. But the consequences of a miss definitely changed. Whatever execution mistakes Tiger made - mental or physical or both - were caused by the architecture, imho, and to a lesser degree, the setup of that architecture.

It's obviously a chicken/egg thing in many respects, but I think the architecture of Augusta and Olympic were the most important factor.

[Phil McDade]

To quote John McLaughlin, WRONG!

I actually think it's mostly the architecture. Tiger didn't change much from those dominant wins to the following majors. But the consequences of a miss definitely changed. Whatever execution mistakes Tiger made - mental or physical or both - were caused by the architecture, imho, and to a lesser degree, the setup of that architecture.

It's obviously a chicken/egg thing in many respects, but I think the architecture of Augusta and Olympic were the most important factor.

George:

Then how do you explain Tiger's disparate play on many of Olympic's hardest holes (1-6) on the first two days of play, compared to the last two days of play? And how do you explain Tiger's similar outcomes on two courses -- Augusta and Olympic -- with such disparate course set-ups and designs?

[Jason Thurman]

George, how many tee shots did you watch Tiger hit on days 1 and 2 at The Masters? There was a HUGE difference between Tiger at Bay Hill and Tiger at Augusta.

[George Pazin]

George, how many tee shots did you watch Tiger hit on days 1 and 2 at The Masters? There was a HUGE difference between Tiger at Bay Hill and Tiger at Augusta.

Indeed there was. I am attributing that difference to the added pressure caused by the architecture.

Phil -

That's the nature of golf. Score is kept by discrete numbers. As such, you won't necessarily see the difference between a good 4 and a less good 4. You can play well and score poorly, you can play poorly and score well - or at least ok.

The difference that I see is that better architecture provides a more complete test of all areas, so the golfer doesn't have a chance to relax, and it's a lot harder to hide weaknesses. Tiger's short game is still weak (speaking relative to how it was 5 years ago).

Speaking more generally, I think that's also why we see certain golfers crumble under the pressure of a major. It's certainly mental weakness on the part of the golfer, but I think part of the cause is the design of a course.

[Jim Hoak]

I think it is primarily the 36--years of age, that is.  His putting has begun to slip--and at age 36 you don't get it back that easily, if ever.  I think it was well said that he is now just a good top 10 golfer, but his dominance is gone forever.

[Kalen Braley]

My vote also goes to the golfer.

As far as I could tell:

1)  The fairway height stayed the same
2)  Fairway width stayed the same
3) Green speed stayed the same
4)  Bunkers stayed the same
5)  Other hazards stayed the same.

Only thing that changed was Tiger....but that was years ago now.  Dominant Tiger is D-U-N!

[Matthew Rose]

I don't think Tiger did a very good job of adjusting to changes in course conditions..... there were shots he hit on Saturday that would have rolled out on Friday but didn't on Saturday due to slightly softer conditions.

He also did not handle the slightly slower green speeds very well. He left a lot of putts short on Saturday.

[Andy Troeger]

George, how many tee shots did you watch Tiger hit on days 1 and 2 at The Masters? There was a HUGE difference between Tiger at Bay Hill and Tiger at Augusta.

Indeed there was. I am attributing that difference to the added pressure caused by the architecture.

I'm with most of the others, George. I think the added pressure came from the "major championship" designation not the architecture. On average, the field as a whole seemed to score better over the weekend at Olympic.  The architecture at Muirfield Village provided just as stern of a "test" as Augusta in terms of difficulty. I don't think that can be ignored.

But as a counterpoint, I will say it seemed like Tiger "just missed" a lot of shots on Saturday that he perhaps could have gotten away with at other venues. So I think there's an argument to be made that the architecture this week at least did make a difference. There's some luck involved when the difference between success and failure is as thin as it was this week.

[Phil McDade]

I'd add this: Tiger after the tournament said Saturday was a particularly frustrating day, because he was off "just a bit off" and said he was "in between" clubs a half-dozen times on holes, and ended up in poor positions.

Old Tiger (circa 2000-2002, or 05-08) would've done what Bill Simmons over at Grantland writes that great basketball players say in crunch time: "I got this." In between a 7 or 8 iron? He'd hit some knock-down or sawed-off 7, or get super-aggressive with an 8, knowing his short game recovery and putting skills would bail him out. He'd figure out that the worst thing about Hoylake was its bunkers, so he used every trick in the bag to avoid them. He'd tack his way around a super-tight Southern Hills ala PGA 2007.

One of the more amazing features of Tiger's majors win record, to me, is that he's found ways to win on a wide variety of courses and in varied ways: links playing super-fast, tight courses, easy set-ups, hard set-ups, in a route and in playoffs, sometimes when his game was white-hot and others when it was less so. Little of that, to me, has to do with architecture; it has almost everything to do with assessing what's out there, and playing it better than anyone else, because he had more game than anyone else, and particularly more mental fortitude than anyone.

Now his game is inconsistent, other players aren't intimidated by him, and he seems to be missing a key part of his confidence that garnered him so many majors.

[George Pazin]

I'd add this: Tiger after the tournament said Saturday was a particularly frustrating day, because he was off "just a bit off" and said he was "in between" clubs a half-dozen times on holes, and ended up in poor positions.

You don't think he was ever in between clubs at Bay Hill or MV? The difference is, it didn't matter there.

Andy, I agree with much of your post, but I do think there is a significant difference between MV and Augusta that goes beyond the added pressure of a major. It might be incredibly small, but so is the difference between winning and losing (though not for Tiger this past weekend).

Majors expose players. It's just hard to tell how much of that is the simple designation of being a major tournament, primarily because most majors are played on great golf courses.

Buttressing my point are the post round comments by Rory (this is admittedly hearsay on my part, I'm simply relating what one of the announcers said): Rory said he didn't hit the ball any differently than last year. Now, also admittedly, a big part of the relative ease of last year was the easier setup, but I think the added difficulty of Olympic's architecture versus Congressional's had something to do with that as well.

[Andy Troeger]

George,
There didn't seem to be a difference between Muirfield Village and Augusta for Tiger before the last few years. He won at about the same frequency at both events. Or between the Majors and everything else quite frankly. That to me speaks to it being the golfer that's changed more than anything else.

There's a bigger difference in architecture IMO between the Bob Hope and the Memorial than there is between the Memorial and the majors. The rest of the differences between Majors and the best tour events are the field and the five inches between the ears. The US Open might be a little bit of an exception because of the difficulty

[George Pazin]

George,
There didn't seem to be a difference between Muirfield Village and Augusta for Tiger before the last few years. He won at about the same frequency at both events. Or between the Majors and everything else quite frankly. That to me speaks to it being the golfer that's changed more than anything else.

There's a bigger difference in architecture IMO between the Bob Hope and the Memorial than there is between the Memorial and the majors. The rest of the differences between Majors and the best tour events are the field and the five inches between the ears. The US Open might be a little bit of an exception because of the difficulty

5 wins at MV vs. 4 at ANGC, 3 in a row at MV vs. 2 in a row at ANGC - tough call, but I think there's a difference. And I agree totally with you that the difference between the Hope and the Memorial is bigger than the Memorial and the majors, it's just hard to tell with Tiger, he doesn't play the Hope...

As an aside, I thought the most interesting stat shown yesterday was scoring averages in the majors since 2009. GM was first, Tiger was 4th. All that relatively poor play and Tiger still ended up 4th. Amazing.

[Phil McDade]

Buttressing my point are the post round comments by Rory (this is admittedly hearsay on my part, I'm simply relating what one of the announcers said): Rory said he didn't hit the ball any differently than last year. Now, also admittedly, a big part of the relative ease of last year was the easier setup, but I think the added difficulty of Olympic's architecture versus Congressional's had something to do with that as well.

George:

I think this anecdote actually contradicts your point. It suggests Rory is one-dimensional in his play when it comes to majors -- he needs a soft course with receptive, dull greens to win. That he played the same way at Olympic suggests he's not very smart, not necessarily that Olympic as a piece of architecture revealed itself as a more difficult test for him.

I'd simply note again that Tiger has won on a variety of courses, with a variety of set-ups, and that architecture appears to have little to do with his inability to win majors.

[Kalen Braley]

Buttressing my point are the post round comments by Rory (this is admittedly hearsay on my part, I'm simply relating what one of the announcers said): Rory said he didn't hit the ball any differently than last year. Now, also admittedly, a big part of the relative ease of last year was the easier setup, but I think the added difficulty of Olympic's architecture versus Congressional's had something to do with that as well.

George:

I think this anecdote actually contradicts your point. It suggests Rory is one-dimensional in his play when it comes to majors -- he needs a soft course with receptive, dull greens to win. That he played the same way at Olympic suggests he's not very smart, not necessarily that Olympic as a piece of architecture revealed itself as a more difficult test for him.

I'd simply note again that Tiger has won on a variety of courses, with a variety of set-ups, and that architecture appears to have little to do with his inability to win majors.

+ 1 Phil....well said!

[George Pazin]

Buttressing my point are the post round comments by Rory (this is admittedly hearsay on my part, I'm simply relating what one of the announcers said): Rory said he didn't hit the ball any differently than last year. Now, also admittedly, a big part of the relative ease of last year was the easier setup, but I think the added difficulty of Olympic's architecture versus Congressional's had something to do with that as well.

George:

I think this anecdote actually contradicts your point. It suggests Rory is one-dimensional in his play when it comes to majors -- he needs a soft course with receptive, dull greens to win. That he played the same way at Olympic suggests he's not very smart, not necessarily that Olympic as a piece of architecture revealed itself as a more difficult test for him.

I'd simply note again that Tiger has won on a variety of courses, with a variety of set-ups, and that architecture appears to have little to do with his inability to win majors.

ToMAYto toMAHto - I think we're kind of saying the same thing, just differently... I'd argue it was Olympic's architecture first and setup second that revealed Rory's shortcomings (and I believe he will overcome these, to a degree, in the long run, btw).

The old Tiger won on a variety of courses, setups and the architecture didn't stop him - in fact I think it helped him, as it eliminated a lot of other potential contenders - but the new Tiger hasn't won on a variety. Yet.

As a further aside, of all the crazy theories I've had on here, this is probably the second weakest. I don't think it really tells us a whole lot; it's a different way of saying great players win on great courses. I think that's generally true, but not always.

 

[Phil McDade]

As a further aside, of all the crazy theories I've had on here, this is probably the second weakest. I don't think it really tells us a whole lot; it's a different way of saying great players win on great courses. I think that's generally true, but not always.

 

George:

That depends on your definition of greatness -- both courses and golfers. Jack won half his US Opens at Baltusrol (Lower) -- is that a great course? Corey Pavin and Goosen won US Opens on Shinnecock -- are they great players? Oakmont, to me, is undoubtedly great, but I'm not totally convinced Larry Nelson and Angel Cabrera are.

I think the better argument is that great players win on a variety of courses, and set-ups, and conditions, and in varied ways.

[George Pazin]

As a further aside, of all the crazy theories I've had on here, this is probably the second weakest. I don't think it really tells us a whole lot; it's a different way of saying great players win on great courses. I think that's generally true, but not always.

 

George:

That depends on your definition of greatness -- both courses and golfers. Jack won half his US Opens at Baltusrol (Lower) -- is that a great course? Corey Pavin and Goosen won US Opens on Shinnecock -- are they great players? Oakmont, to me, is undoubtedly great, but I'm not totally convinced Larry Nelson and Angel Cabrera are.

I think the better argument is that great players win on a variety of courses, and set-ups, and conditions, and in varied ways.

In order -

Baltusrol lower = great.

Pavin and Goosen = great.

Oakmont = great(est) > Nelson & Cabrera = great.

The greatEST players win on a variety.

The more I think about my original idea, the more I like it - which is usually a bad sign... Still, I stand by my point, which is that the architecture is what caused Tiger's problems, not his problems themselves, nor the setup or the fact that it was a major. We're all just speculating, but I think if it's a more basic course, he scrambles with more efficiency and the problems are hidden. Regardless of his mindset, I think Tiger is immune to the pressures normal golfers face in majors, and he has obviously proven he can win on a variety of setups.

I'm not expecting great things from Tiger at Lytham or Kiawah, either, but he may surprise me.

More than anything else, Olympic seems to provide awkward stances, which is one of the hallmarks of greatness in my book (just thought of another thread, prepare to be bored further).

[Andy Troeger]

George,
I think you're living in 2008. Tiger used to be immune to the pressure (or I would say actually thrived on it), but I think its fair to say he's been through a bit of change since then.

Of course he shoots a better score and scrambles better on a less complex course, but so does the rest of the field. Tiger's shots were not as precise as those near the top of the leaderboard. That's not the course's fault. If anything, this should just prove how tough it is to win major championships, let alone 14 (!!) of them. We talk about how he might "only" win a few more majors as if its a disappointment, but its a career for all but a select few.