People have suggested before that Tiger was fading. I always disagreed. I think I am ready to give up. Twice in a row things fell into his lap and he failed miserably. This week ,he was barely followed by the TV cameras after a while. These courses were very tricky. You had small targets on the greens. But Tiger used to produce when playing the toughest courses. Now he seems ordinary. He failed to make putts that mattered. He could not hit fairways.
Is it over?
His driving is crap, as is his putting; it’s obvious that he is still recovering from his injury/surgery. Golfers tend to see a significant performance decline between ages 35 & 40, and Tiger is 33, so he doesn’t have an infinite amount of time to get that career majors record he wants. But I’m not about to write him off, even if we’ll never again see the guy who tore apart four straight majors in 2000-01. People did that with Jack Nicklaus, only to have him win one more multi-year Slam from ages 38-46.
Well, some perspective, please.
He finished last week in 4th place.
He finished this week in 8th place.
He finished the Masters tied for 6th place.
He won the Bay Hill Classic.
Those are his last five tournaments. That’s not exactly a bad set of results! 
Indeed, I’d be willing to bet that, for those 5 tournaments, he has the best aggregate result. By far.
Having said that, he is decidedly un-Tiger like. I watched him in person last Sunday at the Quail Hollow tournament, and he was hitting shots all over the place. Were it anyone other than Tiger, he’d have shot something in the upper 70s, not the even par round he managed (IIRC). It’s a measure of how good Tiger has been that, when I watched from behind him on the tee at 13 last weekend, and saw him hit his shot to 20’ right of the flag, I immediately considered it a particularly bad shot, even though easily over half the field would have taken it right then and there and moved on.
He clearly is having trouble with hitting fade/slices. We saw that all today, and he was doing it last weekend, too. Of course, last weekend he also hit some pulls as well, so it’s not just one thing.
But I noticed something both last weekend and this that I found most interesting: Tiger isn’t concentrating as well as he usually does. He’s somewhat easily distracted. More importantly, he’s not staying focused through his play. Example: Last week, he drove the green on the par 4 14th hole, a mighty drive indeed. Needing at least a birdie, he proceeded to three-putt. His first putt was driven well past the hole, and his downhill second putt wasn’t really close. Tiger three-putting in that situation seems to me an indication of not quite being mentally tough, mentally all there.
For Tiger, which is saying a lot.
Previously his swing was smooth power, now it’s an ugly vicious slash. No rhythm at all.
My thoughts the last few weeks are about all the Tiger criticizers who note that Nicklaus had so many more top 10 finishes, aside from all his victories.
Obviously, Tiger’s recent inability to win, yet place in the top 10, means he is now a better golfer!
But seriously, all I can say is that I think he may still be recovering, but don’t forget Tiger has had a few off years sprinkled in between his truly dominant streaks. My guess is that he’s going to come back with at least one more major, sustained streak of wins before too long.
He will pop the mystique bubble pretty soon. The other players choked a lot in the past. He is giving them much less reason to be afraid.
Don’t send him out to zoo yet. TPC Sawgrass has historically given him problems.
It’s a pretty safe bet that the era of mind-blowing super-ultrahuman out-of-the-galaxy slash-and-burn domination is over. No more 13-stroke Masters wins, no more coming back from 8 holes down to win 4 and 3. Shouldn’t really be all that surprising; it had to end at some point, just like it did for Bill Elliott, Mike Tyson, and Roger Federer.
Domination over? Don’t be so sure. The thing is, while there’s usually at least one player every week that has his number, almost none of them can follow it up next week, or the week after that. Nearly every serious rival to Tiger has either fallen by the wayside (Vijay Singh) or reverted to his normal state of mediocrity (Retief Goosen, David Duval, Sergio Garcia). How slim are the pickings? The #2 player in the world is Phil Mickelson. 'Nuff said.
He is getting up there in years, so if he’s going to make a serious run at Nicklaus’ supreme record, it’s going to have to happen now. Even if he doesn’t make it, though, he won’t go down without a fight, and you can continue to count on lots of 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th place finishes.
Anyway, why not just watch and see? All we can do is speculate at this point, and he may surprise us yet; wouldn’t be the first time.
Some stats, courtesy of the official PGA site…
He’s 142nd in driving accuracy (56%), and he’s lost some distance too, 37th with 292 yards. Even more worrisome than that is that he’s 102nd in greens in regulation, which for him historically is horrible; he was 1st only 2 years ago. 65th in putts per green-in-reg. His scrambling rank of 4th (saves par 68% of the time) is indicative of how much he is fighting the rest of his game.
I have not been one who thought Tiger was fading before. But his putting was terrible. His driving was average . His scrambling abilities were not impressive. The things that saved him before were missing. The players used to be mentally beaten when they faced him. If that stops ,he will have to battle to get the records he chases.
Tough courses were Tigers forte. How often would you hear the announcers say ,nobody has been close to the hole from this spot on the green all day, and Tiger would sink it. He had the speed and could read greens better. He was way off the last couple weeks.
I am not writing him off because winning a couple quick tournies could make the fear come back. But ,if he does not ,it could be gone forever.
I thought I heard the announcer say he was 100% inside of 8 feet. He may have missed a bunch of longer ones, but that doesn’t sound “terrible”.
Tigers stats at TPC
Driv. Accuracy…31st
Drving Dist…T 32
GIR…T40
Putts per rd…32
Sand saves…T16
Where’s the dominance?
He’s coming back from a majory surgery and a year off the tour. He doesn’t care about non-Major tournaments anyway. He treats them as practice rounds. Don’t write him off yet. He’ll probably win the US Open next month and things will be back to normal. That kind of talent and lifelong ambition doesn’t just fall off the table overnight.
He did not swing a golf club from last year’s US Open until January. He had a seven month layoff in a sport which the top players rarely miss a day of practice. He’s been back at it for three and a half months.
It’s a miracle that he’s playing as well as he is. He will be back in top form - it might not be until next year, but rest assured he’ll be back.
On Thursday he was missing a bunch of putts in that range, from the reports I read.
I’ll reserve judgement until after this year’s PGA.
See, here’s why I wouldn’t worry - he had his first knee surgery as a pro in Dec 2002. Here are his starting 2003 stats:
Tournament Place
Buick Invitational 1
Nissan Open T5
Bay Hill Invitational 1
The Players Championship T11
The Masters T15
Memorial Tournament T4
U.S. Open T20
Buick Classic T13
So a period like this is NOT unusual for him.
Other facts:
- He has not been out of the top10 in stroke play since 2007, a 12th place at the British Open
- He has not been out of the top 15 in stroke play since a few tournies earlier than that - namely a 37th place finish at where? TPC
- He won the TPC in 2001 - his results since then? T14, T11, T16, T53, T22, T37, and T8 (he missed the 2008 tourney due to the initial surgery in April, but I don’t think he cried too much about it ) - so this is his best result at this tournament in 8 years!
For all the valid criticism that his driving has been terrible, his putting streaky (I’m being generous there), his irons lackluster, his short game off; he has still finished top ten in his last 5 tournaments (including 1 win).
Fundamentally, if every aspect of this guy’s game is off, and he still finishes like that, the talent is still there. If Tiger keeps on bringing his “D” game and finishing top 10, I’d think that his “B-” game is still going to be pretty dominant.
He Doesn’t care? Has he said this?
I doubt he will win a major this year.
“doesn’t care” may be imprecise. Not to speak for Diogenes, I think he means that while Tiger goes into every single event with the determination and intention of winning, if you were to offer him the choice of A) Winning every non-major tournament of the year but not winning any of the majors or B) Winning a single Major and not winning any non-Major tourneys, it’s pretty clear that he’d take B) every time.
I think he views a lot of the non-Majors as mere preparation for the Majors.