Erik I don't believe you gave your stance on if Tiger's victory at Hoylake was a great example of course management?
I think you could figure out where I stand on that:
- The bunkers and the little bits (some of the taller rough, etc.) off the beaten paths at Hoylake were "bad."
- Tiger's long irons off the tees were still going 250-290+ yards.
- Tiger was so, so much better than even second place in SG:App (he was nearly 2x second-place Adam Scott that year).
- Thus, he was able to avoid the trouble without really increasing the distance he had to the greens, and he given that he was literally in a class by himself with the irons…
… his strategy was
likely a good one.
Here's the thing: that answer wouldn't change if Tiger finished fifth because he hit the ball badly or got "bad luck." Y'all (many, not all) are looking back these two events — both wins, one involving Zach having freakishly good "luck" (i.e. outperforming his norm by a
whole heckuva lot, while Tiger didn't out-perform his norm by nearly as much) — and saying "good strategy." But what about Tiger in 2006? Did he employ a "bad strategy" or did he just not play particularly great? Or did he get some "bad luck"? Also, what did Zach Johnson do in the future years, after he "validated" his strategy with a win? If a win says "good strategy" what about the years he MCed?
Your quotes are all also looking back with hindsight. People before-hand were a little skeptical, but they also really were still often under-estimating how good Tiger was with his irons.
You should know me better than to just throw a bunch of quotes out there. Those same people would also tell you (and have said) that the golf ball starts on the club's path and curves to where the face was pointing (incorrect ball flight laws), or they'd tell you "drive for show, putt for dough," or any number of other things. It's a logical fallacy, this appeal to authority… when in fact they were better
players but that doesn't necessarily make them better at understanding the best strategies or how the golf ball flies or any number of other things within the golf sphere.
And the truth is, as I've said, that if you run the Tiger at Hoylake simulation 100 times with the strategy he employed, and 100 times with "hitting driver on two holes per round," and then another 100 times "hitting driver maybe four times per round," and so on… only then would you start to arrive at what the optimal strategy was. Because, again, we can't know. Maybe hitting driver 3x/round on certain holes would have led to the lowest average score for the tournament. Maybe he employed the optimal strategy. Maybe hitting driver everywhere would have actually been the best strategy. I'd say it's
unlikely given the result, but Tiger is capable of winning while employing less-than-optimal strategies. He used to use The Memorial to work on his game… he'd draw the ball into a right hole location and fade it into a left one… with trouble left… and often win. He said in the press conferences afterward, or in the personal scrum after that, that he was just working on his game, because if he could hit the "wrong" shot and pull it off he knew he could trust it in the major in a few weeks.
Here's a story I've told before, but maybe not here:
I was giving a playing lesson to a young fella named Tim. We were on the eight hole of this course, which has a sort of island green. I had 150 yards (adjusted, as it's downhill a good bit), and I said "It's a 9I yardage but I'm going to chip an 8 because I don't want it floating around up in the air quite as much, and this will control spin a bit more with the steeper landing angle. The hole is way front right, so I'm going to aim center of the green and if I hit a good shot, I'll have a 25-footer or so for birdie. If I pull it, I'll have to work a little harder to two-putt from 45 feet or so, but I should be fine, and if I push it, I might be close and have a real chance at birdie." I hit the shot, immediately said "See, Tim, I pushed it" after the ball had just left the face. The ball hits the front right part of the green and rolls in for eagle.
Luck. The shot was completely within my Shot Zone/shot pattern, which is why I aimed where I did. It was skill to have a shot pattern that size from that yardage, but luck that I didn't hit the exact center of my Shot Zone. Had I pulled it and had a 45-footer, that too would have been luck - literally every shot in there is luck, because it's all coin flips (albeit with an almost infinitely sided coin depending on how precise you want to get with landing spots
). Some of those shots will be closer to the hole, some will be farther out. The closer ones are more toward "good luck" and the bad ones more toward "bad luck."
I've said before that you can have a Perfect Putter set up at 20' and roll balls as exactly as you can and, on average, you might get 3 out of 10 to go in. Some will miss high. Some will miss low. But roll ten balls at a time and there will be runs where you get 1 and runs where you get 7 or 8. Zach had a run that week where he got 7 or 8 when the average is 10. Luck. Randomness. The randomness "fell" in his "favor" that week. Just as it did when I holed out for eagle in a playing lesson.
FWIW we had a good chuckle over that one, and because I'd told him all of that stuff, he
knew it wasn't a "great shot." He knew I'd "missed" it a little. But he also knew I'd planned for it, and at some level expected it — not literally
that specific miss, but I expected my ball to end up somewhere in my Shot Zone.
Hole 13 he had only 213 yards to the hole from the middle of the fairway and choose to lay up to 75 yards to about 8 feet from the hole and made the putt. He was either tied or 1 shot behind the leaders at the time, couldn't tell exactly. But he was playing in front of Tiger who ended up with an eagle on 13. Peter Kostis and Feherty were very surprised and critical of him laying up from 213.
Just because he birdied doesn't mean the strategy was "best." If he lays up 100 times and goes for it 100 times, then you can start to see which strategy would have been best.
I also don't like the word luck for a strategy as no one else choose the route Zach did that week for the par 5's, I would say Zach had peak performance for his approach that week on the par 5's as that was the reason he won.
Did I have peak performance in my playing lesson when I made eagle? Tiger eagled the one hole during the Hoylake victory (I think with a 4I in maybe the second round?): was that shot somehow "better" or "more peak performance" than the 3I from the hanging lie in the bunker at Hazeltine, despite the fact that the 3I didn't go in the hole?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhKDQTDoEwE (the video is stretched, which flattens out the lie in the bunker.)
Guys, very simply this: it's skill to have a Shot Zone of a certain size. It's luck where the specific, small sample size shots fall within a given tournament for the week. It's skill to give a lot of putts a chance to go in. It's luck how many of them actually fall in any given week.
Zach's "performance" was
way at the end of the bell curve that week because he hit a lot more wedges closer and/or made a lot more putts than he normally would, and thus it's chalked up to his "strategy" that week. But again, what of his "strategy" the weeks he MCed at the Masters? In those weeks (and all the rounds he's played at Augusta National) you're starting to get a larger sample size, an average expected score.
To call Zach lucky (super-hot in your words), but not Tiger I think is incongruent.
Tiger was otherworldly with his irons. In a class by himself. His results were not nearly as unlikely as Zach's were.
Also what about Phil Mickelson on 18 at Winged Foot to blow his 2 shot lead?
What about it? You wanna talk about a small sample size? What I remember having watched that tournament was that it was surprising Phil was still in the lead on 18 given his play the rest of the day. He drove the ball poorly most of the day, IIRC. So one tournament isn't a small enough sample size, you want to reduce it to one hole now?
Yet JVDV is unlucky with a 3 shot lead and making 2 bad decisions in a row.
JVDV didn't really make two bad decisions. Unless maybe you're talking about after he hit his second shot.
He drove it off the tee, and he kept it right because OB is left. He got a little lucky that his ball went over the burn, but had he gone in the burn, he could have dropped, hit his third up short of the green if he wanted, chipped on (or wedged on), two-putted for a six, and won.
The only place he couldn't go there was OB. Left.
Then for his second shot, the only place he couldn't go was left again (OB), so he hit it up near the green, where just about anyone on the Tour can get down in three, and had the terribly bad luck of having his round ball hit a round pole at just the right angle to end up where it ended up.
If you're talking about later decisions, and standing in the burn for way too long, etc. then sure, maybe, but none of us know exactly what the lies were like, etc.
I also don't think David Toms was lucky to win by laying up on 18 for his major on the par 4.
I think all are just thinking using the term LUCK so cavalierly for professionals when they win is diminishing their skills and peak performance is possible.
It doesn't diminish their skills in my eyes. If you charted a PGA Tour player's actual performance (regardless of result) on a bell curve, then added "luck" to it, luck would flatten and widen that bell curve. Skill + luck => Results. Zach needed not only a highly skilled period that week to win, but a good bit of luck, too. He needed to have a shot from the right side of his Shot Zone come out when the hole was a little right of where he might have been aiming (or a shot from the center of his Shot Zone come out when he was aiming at the flagstick, or whatever).