Tiger is finished!

Tiger chased some Middle Eastern Big Bucks this weekend. Another indifferent finish. He was one off the lead (T4) going into the final round in Dubai.

Shot 75 and finished T20th.

Last three tournaments he has shot 73-75-75 in the final round.

He stills has the #3 slot in the rankings, but his lead over #4 is very small. There are two relatively big tournaments within the next month with a lot of ranking point available.

WGC Matchplay event starts a week from Wednesday.

WGC-CA tournament at Doral is 2 weeks from Thursday.

The last round in Dubai he cranked off 1 dbl bogie and 4 bogies. Something is missing.
There is also a bit of controversy over his spitting on the 12th green in the last round. The announcers were shocked by it.

The Double bogey was after dumping his wedge shot into the drink on the 18th hole. A wedge shot!

He hacked a pretty big loogie on the 12th green after leaving his 30 ft par putt about 5 ft short. After he spat, he read his second putt and drug his putter over the spittle. He got fined, but I think it is much ado about nothing and he has apologize on Twitter this morning.

It is about something. The Tiger aura is taking self imposed hits over and over. While this is not big to us, it may be more so in Dubai. If he wants to build a new aura ,he needs to be careful.

More woes for Tiger.

Tiger loses his first match in the Matchplay World Golf Championship.

1 down in 19 holes to journeyman European pro Thomas Bjorn.

Bjorn best playing days are probably over, but he found lightning a couple of weeks ago, winning a tournament in the Qatar. Prior to that tournament, Bjorn had been contemplating retirement from Golf because of bad play.

Tiger falls to #5 in the World Golf Rankings. the crappy 2010 season and the shitty start to the 2011 season are catching up to him and as I said in post #9, I think he will be out of the top 10 when the Masters week starts.

The mystique is almost gone. He can get it back but the time is growing short. Once he is no longer giving his fellow pros fear he becomes just another pro golfer like David Duval. I wonder what the talk on the tour is?

Between the end of Tom Watson’s dominant period (early/mid Eighties) and the rise of Tiger Woods, there were MANY different people you could have pointed to at one time or another and said, “He’s the best golfer in the world.” At various points, it might have been Curtis Strange or Nick Faldo or Greg Norman or Nick Price or Seve Ballesteros or Ernie Els.

Thing is, even when those guys were at their best, NOBODY feared them. Oh, everybody respected Nick Faldo, everyone knew just how talented Nick Price was, and everybody knew Seve Ballesteros was dangerous, but NOBODY ever went into a tournament thinking, “I can’t beat this guy… he’s just too good.” Nobody took foolish chances when playing against Curtis Strange, because even when he had a two or three stroke lead on Sunday, competitors figured, “I’ll just play my game and see what happens- he could still make a mistake and give me an opening.”

Before Tiger came along, the best golfer in the world (whoever that was) inspired respect, but not awe. Martin Kaymer and Lee Westwood are now the highest ranked golfers in the world, but do they intimidate anyone? No.

And that’s where Tiger is now. He’s still good. He’s still very good. There’s no reason he can’t win many more tournaments, including a few more majors. But it will never be easy again. Nobody is going to roll over and play dead for him, ever again. Tiger CAN be the best in the world again, but only in the same way that Ian Woosnam was briefly the best in the world. Tiger will never be the odds-on favorite to win any tournament again.

FWIW, Woods is the co-favorite to win the Masters at England’s bookmaker Ladbrokes at 7/1.

http://sports.ladbrokes.com/en-gb/Golf/US-MastersGolf/US-Masters-t210001483

To some the news comes slowly. But the gamblers are about money not likelyhood to win. Lots of people will still put money on Tiger.

Exactly right- oddsmakers are not in the prediction business. Their job is to make sure the betting money is spread out evenly, so that there’s no risk of bookies having to pay EVERYBODY.

Even if experts believed Tiger Woods was really a 15-1 or 20-1 shot now (I’m exaggerrating, of course), they’d be foolish to set such long odds. The public at large still believes Tiger will turn back into his old dominant self any moment now, and millions of people would bet the rent on Tiger if the odds against him were high.

There are reasons. He blew his mystique, took too much time off, revamped his swing again and lost the ability to save his round with spectacular chips and putts.

Bumping this thread to say that Tiger just tweeted that he is not playing Quail Hollow next week because of knee and Achilles issues.

My guess that he will also skip TPC the following week.

This may be good news for me. The more time he takes off, the more the pressure builds for the majors. And the The Open this year is in Sandwich, my home town, so I’m rather looking forward to him turning it on in July.

Tiger does play TPC, Sort of.

Tiger Withdraws after 9 holes. shooting 6 over par 42.

He has had 4 knee operations. You can not assume he will be able to play again at his old level. Perhaps he is through.

Well, nobody else in history played at Tiger’s old level for very long, and only a few matched it for even one year, so it would be pretty remarkable if he ever got back to his 2000, or even 2007, game.

But even if it takes him a couple more years to even play at, say, a Phil Mickelson level, he’ll still be just 37 then. He only needs to win once or twice a year for the next ten years to break Snead’s record for career wins, and he only needs to win a major once every two years for the next ten years to break Jack’s record for majors.

IMO he’s already done more than enough to be rated the best ever. What happens from now on is more about longevity and durability than excellence. If someone doesn’t already think he’s the best ever, I don’t see why winning once every two years from now on should change his opinion.

Tiger dominated in a time of much bigger and international fields. He is clearly the best of all time.

IMO, not until he reaches 19.

Yes, competition is better and he is heads and tails better than anyone in his generation.

But it is hard to compare eras. Tiger played with SO MUCH better technology, (equipment and agronomy) than Jack. And yes, I realize the competition has the technology.

HOWEVER…(and bear with me with an open mind)

the old equipment puts a bigger degree of randomness in the equation. What does randomness do? Yields unpredictable results.

Simple Golf Example:

A Putting competition between you (an average hack) and Tiger Woods. 15 foot putts, straight putts, putts with 6" and 12" of break left and right. typical putts that you and tiger would see in a round of golf.

Do you have a better chance against Tiger with a perfect green?

Or do you have better chance if the green is littered with spike marks, ball marks, debris, etc.

IMO, the average hack has a much better chance against Tiger with the obstacles in the way.

Not that it would help your chances of making those putts, (It would actually hurt your chances) but it would hurt Tiger’s chances of making those putts a lot more than you.

An extreme example to illustrate my point, but quality control of golf clubs and golf balls is so much better today than it was 40 yrs ago in Nicklaus’ era. The old Balata balls would be out of round after a couple of hits. They would scar and blemish easily.

Same theory goes for clubs, shafts and heads.

And IMO, the biggest difference (and mostly ignored) is agronomy and lawn mowing. The grass is so much more consistent with technology in weed control, pest control, aeration, core sampling, acidity, etc.

And just the routine maintenance of the grass is much more consistent. Fairways and Greens are cut more precisely which leads to more predictable results.

Tiger is a great player, no doubt, the greatest of this generation, by far. But I would not call him the greatest ever.

But consider what the technology does. To oversimplify, the newer balls hook and slice less, and go farther. The newer clubs have a much bigger “sweet spot,” and are much more forgiving for slight mishits.

All of which combine to help less skillful players play better. 50 years ago, the more skillful player had a bigger advantage over the less skillful player than he does today. In other words, it is harder for the best player to separate himself from the pack, when everyone is playing with modern equipment.

Which means that if you can dominate like Tiger did in the 2000’s, you would have been even more dominant in previous generations. IMO.