I know it was three days ago, gimme a break, I’m on vacation….
- The defense for Jim Furyk hitting a driver on the 17th hole on Sunday is that he’s one of the best golfers in the world, and he certainly knows his own game better than anyone.
It’s a real argument. I’m not dismissing it. The problem is it’s the entire argument. I can’t think of any other defense for it.
The 17th was the 71st hole of the Open. Furyk was tied for the lead. Two pars get him a playoff, and he knew that.
It’s a 306-yard par-4. Furyk, or any world-class player, could reach it with, say, a 3-iron and wedge. He hit the driver maybe 30 yards short of the green in the left rough, which was the approximate thickness of linguini with concrete sauce. With the pin left and a bunker between Furyk and the hole, he was essentially dead. He made bogey and lost by a shot.
Tiger hit driver on 17 and got it into the right greenside bunker, about the best possible result unless you somehow fit it into exactly the right distance and line and actually got it on the green. And even from there, Tiger didn’t come close to making birdie, and had to make a putt to save par.
Furyk’s explanation afterward was (to be excruciatingly kind) bizarre: He didn’t think he could reach the heavy stuff with a driver, and even after he did he should have been able to dig it out of the rough and make par.
Huh? The only imaginable reason to hit driver is to get the ball on or around the green, and Furyk is saying he not only wasn’t capable of that, he wasn’t capable of getting within 30 yards of it. On a hole where he could have hit an iron and a wedge, not come close to stretching his comfort zone and not messed with the rough at all unless his execution was terrible, his defense of hitting driver is that he didn’t believe he could get it there?
What the *!$@*?
- Big picture, the most important thing anyone did or said at Oakmont was relayed by NBC/Golf World’s Tim Rosaforte from Tiger’s teacher Hank Haney, who said that Saturday’s round, when Tiger hit 17 straight greens and shot a near-perfect 69, was the first time since they’d been working together that Tiger really brought everything they’ve been working on to the golf course.
Tiger left Butch Harmon in 2003, and started with Haney in early 2004. Those are the only two years this decade Tiger didn’t win a major, and the only two years since 1998 he didn’t finish first on the money list.
What for? Three years later, he’s brought full-blown Haneyism to the course once. For 18 holes. According to Haney.
You don’t need to hear that Tiger isn’t the golfer, or at least isn’t the ball-striker, he was at his peak. Just watch. He hits more bad full-swing shots than he used to, and even more undeniably, he hits fewer mind-bogglingly brilliant full-swing shots than he used to. Remember the uphill 220-yard bunker shot he hit, to a tucked back-left pin, with a one-shot lead on the 72nd hole of the 2000 Canadian Open? Remember his last full shot of that magical 10-win year, a 6-iron to four feet of the 18th hole at Firestone in the dark? Ask yourself this: Does Tiger circa 2007 have any chance to win a U.S. Open by 15 shots?
He’s still the best golfer alive because he’s the best golf thinker and competitor ever, and has the best short game ever. Unless parenthood or something else saps his desire he will almost certainly own every record that matters, Nicklaus’ 18 pro majors foremost among them. That’s how ridiculously good this guy is.
But he essentially conceded two years’ worth of majors while his mechanics were at the teardown stage. He’d be close to 18 majors now if he’d stayed with Harmon. The point here is not that Harmon is God, but that Woods’ achilles is his fanatical need to tinker, his inability to leave great enough alone. And that that need compels him to give himself over to a coach to an extent that ought to be way beneath him.
Nicklaus has lived with a flying right elbow for 50 years.
