Capelle On Golf

A lot of attention has been focused on Tiger Woods’ putting lately, and with good reason, for he’s been holing crucial putts from everywhere for the last seven months. Draining putts is a big part of his winning formula, but over the long run, Tiger does his best when his swing is in top form. Since turning pro, Woods has led the tour in greens hit in regulation (GIR) five times. He has, not coincidentally, won nine of his thirteen majors during these five seasons. The other four were captured in three years when his overall ball striking was not up to his highest standards.

Jack Nicklaus was also well known for his superb ball striking, and for elevating his game for the majors. He compiled some impressive GIR numbers in well into his forties and led the PGA Tour in GIR in 1980 at age 40, the first year that the tour kept that stat. The evidence also points to some ball striking masterpieces when someone bothered to keep the numbers. These include a virtuoso 61 GIR performance (84.7%) that keyed his victory at the 1967 U.S. Open.

I compiled a new stat that shows that Woods has a similar ability to peak at the majors. In 149 regular PGA Tour events from 1997-2007 (missed cuts and match play events are not in the numbers) he led the field in GIR 15 times, or 10.1%. He won 10 of these events.

At 41 majors (he missed one cut and stats are not available for the 1997-98 British Opens) he led the field in GIR 11 times. That’s 26.8% of the time compared to 10.1% at regular tour events. He won eight of the 11 majors when he was #! in GIR.

By nearly tripling his field leading GIR average at the majors, Woods has offered more proof of what we already know: that he’s an expert at rising to the occasion.