Capelle On Golf

Karma Police Got to Woods
Tiger Woods should have known better, but he does now. With a moment of reflection, he came to realize that he sowed the seeds for his defeat earlier in the year when he uncharacteristically pronounced that the Slam was “easily within reason.” After failing to win the first leg, an older but wiser Woods said, “I learned my lesson there with the press.”

Tiger’s Temper in Check
Golf tests a golfer’s patience, and none more so than the perfectionist oriented Tiger Woods. Recently I wrote several posts on his outbursts at Doral, and in general. I won’t claim any credit, but someone must have gotten through to Tiger, or maybe he realized on his own that it was time to clean up his act.

In any case, there were a couple of times when swear words would certain to be echoing in the pines after errant tee shots. Instead, the patrons were treated to, “Oh Woodrow” and, “Oh Tiger.” Is Woods maturing into the on-the-course role model that we’ve been hoping for? Or was he on his best behavior because this was the Masters? For the kids’ sake, let’s hope that Tiger is curse free from now on.

Tiger Gains on Jack
Tiger Woods is no doubt pissed that he walked away with second at the Masters because he knows he could have easily won. Though wins are the big thing in his quest to become the Best Ever, seconds count too. Prior to last year’s Masters, Jack Nicklaus enjoyed a 19-2 lead over Tiger in seconds. With his runner-up finish at the Masters, Tiger has cut the margin to 19-5. That’s significance progress.

Tiger’s Driving
Tiger’s accuracy stat off the tee looked okay, considering he is one of the tour’s wildest drivers. At Augusta he hit 36 of 56 fairways. The problem was that his ball ended up in a forest on at least 6 of those 20 misses. One errant tee shot led to a bogey at 14. Two others cost him chances for possible two-putt birdies at 13 and 15. He was successful at saving pars from the forest at 17, and twice at 18, but those pars eliminated the possibility of him making birdie.

In sum, Tiger played those six hole in one over, when 1-2 under would have likely been his total if he’d kept his ball out of the trees. Golf has stats for bogeys and double bogeys. Perhaps it time to create a Drives in the Forest stat so we can distinguish between drives that trickle into the first cut and those that disappear into Sherwood Forest.

Tiger’s Amazing Scrambling
After four stroke play events on the PGA Tour, Tiger’s GIR average is 73.26% (#1), a couple of percent better that his tour leading average last year. Where Tiger has gained huge ground is in his scrambling, excluding sand saves. Last year he saved par (or better) 65.26% of the time when he missed the green (but not in a bunker).

This year his average has soared to an astonishing 83.93%! If he was scrambling at the same rate as last year, he would have scored 10 shots higher in those four tournaments. In fact, if Tiger scrambled at last year’s rate (on non-bunker shots), he would have not have won Bay Hill, and he would have finished 11t at the Masters.

Tiger’s Putting
In the last 13 majors, he’s failed to win these five because of poor putting:
2006, 2007, and 2008 Masters
2005 and 2007 U.S. Opens

His putts were often so far off line that it appeared that the world’s best green reader, and one with encyclopedic knowledge of Augusta’s rolling surfaces, was suffering from a memory lapse. But it turns out that his problem was in his mechanics.

“I kept dragging the blade. I wasn’t releasing it, wasn’t getting the over spin like I normally do. Out here, if you are not starting the ball on line, you’re not going to make any putts.”

“I’ve tried to release it (the blade), tried to get it going, tried to hook my putts, tried to do anything to get the thing rolling properly. For some reason on the longer putts, I was great. On the shorter putts, I just kept dragging it.”

Golf must drive Woods nuts. Just when he makes progress in one area, another falters. And when he brings that up to speed, as he did with his short game, something else slips out of gear. But who would think that it would be his putting mechanics on short putts.

It is hard to imagine anything going wrong with that super short robotic action that he’s practiced for thousands upon thousands of hours. But it did, and it no doubt will again. The juggling act never ceases, and that’s why winning majors is never a certainty, not even for Tiger Woods.