Capelle On Golf

Tiger Wood’s hoisted the super cool looking WGC -Match Play trophy, which looks like an Egyptian artifact, for the third time in the last five years on Sunday. In hindsight, his victory should have been no surprise. The Gallery South Course outside of Tucson may look difficult to viewers at home with its cactus lined fairways and rock strewn hazards. But for the pros it was a Shooting Gallery. Runner-up Stuart Cink averaged 65.78 in the five matches leading up to the finals (prorating for 18 holes). Stuart Appleby scored 9 birdies in knocking out Phil Mickelson. Aaron Baddeley lost to Tiger despite making 10 birdies in a 14 hole stretch.

And as for Tiger Woods, he must have thought he was back at Dad Miller, a player friendly muni in Anaheim, CA. Here’s why. The Gallery’s South Course measures 7,350, but after allowing for the thin half-mile high air, it plays about 6,900 New Era yards. Now take off another 12% for high tech balls and clubs and you’ve got a course that plays like about a 6,100 yards in 1960s-1980s yardage. Now throw in mammoth 8,000 square foot greens, generous fairways, and forgiving rough that helped errant tee balls from rolling into the desert, and you’ve got a bombers delight. In short, this course played right into Tiger’s hands, and he took full advantage of it. He hit par 5s in two with regularity, went pin hunting whenever he could on the shorter holes, and never once (that I remember) employed an iron off the tee on the par fours and fives like he does so often in the majors.

Tiger won six matches by a combined 18 up over 117 holes. Let’s see how that breaks down over the four basic categories of holes. I’ve created a new category, drivable par 4s, since the course had two of them. For the week Tiger averaged 3.38 on these holes, so they really played more like super long par 3s.

26 Par 5s - 6 up 23.1%
52 Par 4s - 8 up 15.4%
13 Dr. par 4s - E 00.0%
26 Par 3s - 4 up 15.4%

Tiger, as expected, pickup up a good portion of his winning margin on the par 5s, which to him played like medium to long par fours. His laser-like short irons enabled him to pick up sizeable ground on the regular par 4s, while his fine iron play and putting gave him an edge on the par 3s. He had no advantage on the drivable par 4, which offered most players the chance to show off their short game skills.

In a nutshell, here is Woods’ winning formula: 1) a course that was perfectly suited to all facets of his game, 2) a super hot and timely putter, 3) three opponents who played him tough, but could not close the deal, which is Tiger’s specialty.