So there was Tiger Woods, in the press room, saying that if Y.E.Yang hadn’t chipped in and I’d made that putt and he’d done this and I hadn’t done that…
In short, there was Tiger talking like every golfer who’d come close and fallen short since the beginning of time.
I was glad to hear Tim Rosaforte, on the Golf Channel Sunday, say that one point of Sunday was it reminded us how hard golf is. I was happy to be reminded of that.
The other point was that for years and years, the story of this sport has been these situations, in major championships, going in one man’s favor again and again and again and again. At times it seemed closer to supernatural then anything in sports, ever.
Now that’s over. It’s a game played by humans. Exclusively. Anyone who says that isn’t significant doesn’t get it. Imagine you’re Phil Mickelson or Sergio Garcia. Tell me your worldview didn’t change a little Sunday.
How many times last weekend did we hear, “It was inevitable..”, or, “it had to happen sometime..” Why? The “record” everyone was talking about was Tiger being 14-for-14 when holding or sharing the 54-hole lead in majors. How many times did Jack Nicklaus blow a Sunday lead in a major? Twice.
There was nothing inevitable about this. Tiger shot 75 Sunday. Of the top 15 finishers, 12 scored better Sunday and only one, Paddy Harrington, scored worse.
The truth is Tiger isn’t the same golfer he was pre-surgery. His ball-striking is better than in recent years, probably because of the repaired and thus firmed-up leg. The short game and the fine details of concocting a score aren’t close, not compared to the previously-unmatched and -unimagined level of roughly 2004-08.
Consider the weak chips he hit on 17 and 18 Sunday. Not only the result, but the seeming lack of commitment and imagination. That’s what’s really different now
How many times in that stretch of roughly 2004-08 did you watch Tiger play and think, “My God, if he could drive the ball in the fairway, he’d be 30 under par.”? It looks now like he actually thrived on that wildness. His game no longer being a Rude Goldberg machine seems, paradoxically, to have thrown him a little.
He’ll be back, of course. Never again to the surreal level of 2000, it says here, but back. How everybody else reacts will probably be more interesting than how Tiger does.
