Tiger's fatal flaw?

[Tim Pitner]

The lie in the bunker was the second time Tiger was screwed by the course...if it would have been blowing and weather like the practice rounds Tiger would have won by 10 shots.  His gameplay was flawless based on poor weather but far too conservative for the conditions the first three days.

Ridiculous.  If Scott or Els had holed some putts, they each could have won by several shots.  Tiger chose or was compelled to play away from his driver this week and, other than on his front 9 on Thursday, his ball striking was spotty.  He didn't look that sharp to me--it's a tribute to him as an athlete and competitor that he was even in touch with the leaders. 

[Patrick_Mucci]

Josh,

Whose hands are attached to the club ?

Whose brain makes the decisions ?

The golf course is static, save for the wind.

In the ultimate, the golfer has to take responsibility for his play.

[Dan King]

I watched a lot of Tiger Woods at Stanford, and the kid was amazing, but his putting was not to PGA standards. In college he was so much better than his competition that he could get away with poor putting. I was shocked when he came out on the PGA Tour and sunk everything. It was the same stroke as in college, but it seemed like he was making everything.  When he was making everything inside 10 feet plus had such a strong rest of his game, he was unstoppable.

My prediction for why he would have trouble is finally coming true :-)  He is a better putter than he was  at Stanford, but he isn't any better putter than the rest of the field, causing him all sorts of problems from the green back.

Cheers,
Dan King

There's more to life than just golf. I'm here for the four years.
 --Tiger Woods (on how long her plans to stay at Stanford)

[Jason Topp]

To me it seemed that he played scared - scared of his driver, scared of short wedges and scared that a putt would run too far past the hole.  I assume he will be required to hit driver at the PGA if there is wind.  It will be interesting to see what happens.

[JSlonis]

Outside of short game/putting, I think there are a couple things that are hindering him right now. Obviously, he's already won three times this year, but he's struggled at the Majors after getting into the mix

1. Inability to hit the short irons/wedges close. When he first came on tour, he struggled in that area. He worked hard on it and became among the best on tour. Seems under Foley, he is struggling a bit with distance control. He's got the club a little steep and delofted and it can be tough to control distance with that.

2. Like others have said, he still avoids the driver. Right now, it appears he only has one single shot he somewhat trusts with his driver...a big cut.  Regardless of the current driving stats on tour, it's clear that he plays away from that club. It's hard to understand really because with the modern ball and driver it's never been easier in the history of the game to hit the driver in play.  At Lytham he could've easily reached a couple of the par 4's and never once tried. I can't recall the last time I saw him try to draw the ball off the tee with the big stick.

[Josh Tarble]

I don't think that statement is too far off base...maybe screwed by the course was the wrong choice of language.  But the whole time I was watching I kept thinking his gameplan was ideally suited to the weather they face on Monday thru Wednesday.  

That being said it was still up to Tiger to adjust to the course and whether he was too stubborn or too scared of the driver or just thought he could still win with that plan, who knows?

[Brad Isaacs]

Anyone think that problems with driver might be, as Phil M. onece said, only Tiger could win win his equipment?

[Mike Benham]

FWIW, after his T3 finish, Tiger is now the #2 ranked golfer ...

[RJ_Daley]

Brad, I saw a discussion somewhere along the line that golf experts and analysts were saying Nicklaus's record is all the more impressive because he won all those tournaments and majors with the crappiest ball on the market. 

Is there a case that Tiger would do better with a new bag of implements and balls?  Is his big endorsement deal w/Nike an anchor around his neck? 

[Matthew Rose]

His "B" game isn't enough to win anymore. I think he also knows this.... and it's messing with his head. For a guy who prides himself on being the most mentally tough golfer who ever lived, he doesn't seem that mentally tough anymore.

He makes more stupid, careless bogeys than he's ever made before. Part of that is that his short game seems to have regressed. A lot. He's a basket case out of bunkers these days. Just about once per round, he will screw up a fairly routine up and down.

He doesn't own the par-fives even remotely like he used to. Seems like in a 72 hole event, he'll bogey one or two of them.

And the putter..... that's already been well covered ground, but it bears repeating. He went 10 years without missing a crucial four-footer. Now he misses a bunch.

No, his career is not over by any means.... not by a long shot. Don't know if Kiawah suits him, though.

[Patrick_Mucci]

I don't know that finishing 3rd in a major is a sign of doom.

Like many, he caught a bad lie in a bunker with a shot, that according to him, was one yard off line.
That one shot may have altered who the winner was.

Then, he tried to hit too heroic of a shot rather than accept that bogey.

[Jud_T]

To say that he was scared of his driver this week is silly.  He had a game plan and stuck to it.  If he had won everyone would be saying how brilliant he was for leaving the driver in the bag.  fyi- he's currently 3rd on tour in Overall Driving.

[Mark_F]

It's between his ears - Alliss mentioned today that on the range all of his divots were lovely thin strips. On the course they were enourmous gouges.

Is there anyone on this forum who swings the same on the range as they do on the course? 

  No one on this forum is the former World Number One with 14 Major wins, David.

[Doug Siebert]

I questioned Tiger's plan for this week but in retrospect it was the right plan. Even in the final round. He figured the field would likely back up and that something just under par would probably be good enough. He was one slightly pulled approach away from his 15th major. He knew that staying out of the fairway bunkers was the key to winning and they turned out to be the downfall of everyone but Ernie. Ernie was probably fortunate to hit that many drivers and avoid them to the degree that he did. Great for him.

Yes, it's fine to point to his one blowup hole as the cause, but don't forget he had several really lucky bounces on Saturday.  In particular I recall his approach to 7 where he hit a really low runner that landed 30 yards short of the green and probably just missed hitting the sloped ground to kick the ball into the bunkers on the left by 2 or 3 inches.  There were several other shots that a couple feet would have put him in one of those bunkers.  Given their small size and high lips, it is inevitable that if you hit in those bunkers you'll have some percentage of balls up against the lip.  When you continually leave yourself 200+ yard approaches, you make it inevitable that you will find some of those greenside bunkers.  If Tiger had never got himself up against the lip that would have been a far more surprising outcome, and would have required some pretty amazing luck.

Tiger also compounded the error due to pride, because his Saturday playing partner made an amazing escape from up against the lip, Tiger believed he could as well, even despite having that fried egg lie.  Instead of saying he was one pull away from winning (quite a big assumption in itself given how he's given away a couple majors in recent years when he was in the lead) you might say he was an inch away from getting a quintuple bogey NINE on that hole if his ball had brushed against his shoulder and added two strokes to his score.

If he hadn't blown up there, I think he still wouldn't have won.  He doesn't have anywhere like the mental game (and consequently, putting game) that he used to have when he was dominant.  He will never get that back.  He will win another 2-3 majors, but will never dominate and never intimate the field into falling away from him like dominoes as they used to.  I have a feeling that Tiger and his believers will think he's "almost there" for years and years.  It'll be torture for them, like Els fans at the Masters or Phil fans at the US Open.

[Patrick_Mucci]

Doug Siebert,

It was amazing how the field used to fall away from him, unlike anything I've ever seen on the PGA Tour.

To me, from my limited vantage point, many of his swings look like he's trying to muscle the ball.

His swing used to seem much smoother, less reliant on his big muscles

[John Foley]

Am I the only person here who was amazed by the # of 220+ yard shots into par 4's he had this weekend? It seemed like the rest of the field (Scott especially) we're much more interested in challenging the bunkers to get better shots into the green. A few 3W an occasional driver. If the course was F&F it would have made more sense.

VERY interested to see how he does at Kiawah - has he played there before?

[Rick Shefchik]

Doug Siebert,

It was amazing how the field used to fall away from him, unlike anything I've ever seen on the PGA Tour.

To me, from my limited vantage point, many of his swings look like he's trying to muscle the ball.

His swing used to seem much smoother, less reliant on his big muscles

I think it's pretty clear that his legs -- particularly his knees -- are still giving him trouble. He was limping noticeably when he got up from that awkward squat on the edge of the greenside bunker.

[Doug Siebert]

Brad, I saw a discussion somewhere along the line that golf experts and analysts were saying Nicklaus's record is all the more impressive because he won all those tournaments and majors with the crappiest ball on the market. 

Is there a case that Tiger would do better with a new bag of implements and balls?  Is his big endorsement deal w/Nike an anchor around his neck? 

How so?  Nike designed balls and clubs to his exact specs, it isn't as though he made a deal with Nike and they said "go ahead and pick out which one of the balls we already make and some of our clubs off the rack".

That discussion about Nicklaus was because of the poor quality of ALL the balls McGregor made, so even if they had made the best Jack ball they could, if they could not make any ball as good as Titleist did it would be of limited help to Nicklaus.  I'm just repeating what was said, obviously I have no idea of the ball making capability of McGregor back in the day.  Certainly wwhen you have balls made with a liquid center, are winding hundreds of feet of rubber cord around the core, and using material made from a tree for the cover, manufacturing them consistently balanced and round will be difficult if not impossible.

Perhaps the guys like Patrick Mucci who played competitively at a pretty high level as an amateur back in those days can comment, but I was told by a friend of my dad's who was in the "qualified for the US Amateur a couple times" category that pros and good amateurs would go through the boxes of balls and test them for roundness using a metal ring and also for balance by floating them in salt water.  The best ones would be saved for competition rounds, the worst ones would be used for shag balls.  He said essentially every ball was slightly off center, so he'd put a dot on it and leave that face up when putting to avoid the ball's off center wobble from costing him putts (the old school equivalent of a cheater line, I guess)  If the Titleists he played with were that crappy, and if other companies produced even worse balls it would be an obvious disadvantage.  Presumably a guy of Nicklaus' stature could have the balls at McGregor sorted so he only gets the best ones.  The only problem with that is if their best is not as good as Titleist's best then it still hurts him.

These days every ball you buy, even the $15/dozen boxes of crap that hackers buy at Walmart, are perfectly round and perfectly balanced.  In that respect at least (making equipment more consistent and at least offering the potential for making it cheaper) I have no problem with technology advances in the game at all!

[Carl Nichols]

Doug Siebert,

It was amazing how the field used to fall away from him, unlike anything I've ever seen on the PGA Tour.

To me, from my limited vantage point, many of his swings look like he's trying to muscle the ball.

His swing used to seem much smoother, less reliant on his big muscles

I think it's pretty clear that his legs -- particularly his knees -- are still giving him trouble. He was limping noticeably when he got up from that awkward squat on the edge of the greenside bunker.

I thought he was walking awkwardly well before that.  He seemed to be in a decent amount of pain. 

[Phil McDade]

John:

I'm not sure Tiger had any more longer approaches at Lytham than he did at Hoylake, when he torched the course at -18, won the Open Championship, and famously pulled his driver all of one time. I clearly remember Tiger playing some holes at Hoylake 4-iron/4-iron. He's just not the same player he was back then, as Shivas points out (stealing, of course, from my many previous claims to that argument in threads past ). He played some really brilliant recovery shots -- that 5-iron from just off the green for a tap-in up-and-down was great, and he holed a bunker shot on 18 on Saturday. But he also played some really poor recovery shots. He hit some great putts and some incredibly poor ones (missing uphill 15-footers for birdie by a foot to the side of the hole on Sunday). His short-irons were occasionally on, but mostly off, in terms of distance control. He hit a lot of fairways, but also had some really bad misses off the tee.

He used to be fearless -- the most fearless golfer since Seve, and far more aggressive and fearless than Jack in his prime. Now he seems tentative. He's incredibly inconsistent. And, as Patrick correctly points out (in another stolen line from my points in previous Tiger threads ), he's not that feared anymore.

Sunday's outcome, from my perspective, could not have been filled with more irony. I remain convinced that Tiger's ascension in 1997 -- and his domination for the next decade -- caused many of his peers to wilt in his presence; they simply were intimidated by his talent and will to win golf tournaments. At the top of that list was Els, who had won a major pre-Tiger, won the major immediately following Tiger's breakout at Augusta in 1997, and then watched Tiger just stomp everyone in his way for the next 10 years. Els won one more major during Tiger's reign -- hardly what you'd expect of maybe the second-most talented player the game has seen in the past 20 years or so. Watching Els aggressively take on the back nine Sunday and come home in 32, with a birdie at the last (that was a vintage Tiger putt -- that thing was five feet past the hole if it doesn't go in), while Tiger bunted his way around Lytham, made for one of the better Opens of recent years.

[Chris DeNigris]

I don't think he's hurt. If he was he wouldn't have been able to contort himself into some of those bunker stances nevermind swing as forcefully as he did in them.

Even normal knees would cause you to temporarily limp a little after that kind of stress.

I was surprised he got himself into those positions given what he did to himself under the IKE tree at Augusta a few years back.

[Greg Beaulieu]

Still say it is putting:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/22/sports/golf/tiger-woods-struggling-with-putting-accuracy.html

From his public comments, I'd think Tiger agrees that it's mostly putting.

But can one trust anything he says as being truthful? He is master at speaking without actually saying anything.

[Brent Hutto]

Watching Els aggressively take on the back nine Sunday and come home in 32, with a birdie at the last (that was a vintage Tiger putt -- that thing was five feet past the hole if it doesn't go in), while Tiger bunted his way around Lytham, made for one of the better Opens of recent years.

That was a treat, well described there.

I've always liked watching Ernie play and in his own laid-back-looking way he tends to be as stupidly aggressive as Phil without really seeming to be so. He has a nice touch around the greens but doesn't play much in the way of the spectacular flops and so forth. But he's about as prone to challenge obstacles and hazards with his long game as anyone who has won multiple majors.

Apparently his change in putting style (not the putter per se but finally putting his damned eyes over the ball) was the big difference maker this time around. If his putting really does stay revitalized, one might hope to see him grab another couple majors before he's done. I would not care to bet against either Els or Adam Scott at Kiawah in a couple weeks time.

[Wade Whitehead]

Sorry to repeat this.  The two most significant differences in Tiger's situation now are:
     1. Other players aren't afraid of him and
     2. Every fan isn't rooting for him.

They were the intangibles that will never be recovered.

WW

[Brent Hutto]

Still say it is putting:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/22/sports/golf/tiger-woods-struggling-with-putting-accuracy.html

From his public comments, I'd think Tiger agrees that it's mostly putting.

But can one trust anything he says as being truthful? He is master at speaking without actually saying anything.

No, I don't expect frankness or even truth from Tiger. Not his style. I guess I just happen to agree with his "nothing" this time around. Dude was putting more like Woody Austin than Tiger Woods this week.