Was Tiger Woods Too Conservative at the PGA Championship?
On the radio this morning I heard Brandon Chamblee and Tim Rosaforte conduct yet another post mortem on Tiger Wood's failure to win the PGA Championship last Sunday. Over and over they beat the same drum that has become the conventional wisdom:
Tiger Woods is a poor strategist.
He's become too conservative in his old age.
.jpg?w=256 "Colts Jaguars Football")
He's hitting irons and five woods off the tee and not firing at enough pins.
He's going to have to play more aggressively if he wants to win more majors.
Yadda, yadda, yadda.
In a post a couple of days ago, I disagreed strongly with this thesis. See here:
Interestingly, Rosaforte says he conducted an interview this week with someone who shares my opinion. That person is Jack Nicklaus. (Rosaforte's interview with Jack is scheduled to air on the Golf Channel next week) According to Rosaforte, Jack said that Tiger's only strategic mistake occurred on Sunday when he reached the Par 3 17th trailing by a shot. Trying to make something happen, Tiger aggressively fired at the back left pin. His ball went over the green and buried itself in the deep rough.
This led to bogey and let Yang, who had himself bogied 17, off the hook. Yang was able to walk to the 18th tee still up by one shot, not tied as he should have been. Clearly Jack thinks the odds are that the pressure would have finally got to Yang on 18.
In others words, there was a good chance Yang would not have had the nerve to pull of his remarkable hybrid shot to the 18th flag under those circumstances. Even he he held his own and parred 18, Tiger likely would have parred out as well.
And let's be honest, Yang probably would have had as much chance in a playoff as Watson did against Cink a few weeks ago.
So, the Master has spoken. The strategic mistake Tiger made was being too aggressive, not being too conservative. Sunday's results weren't the work of a tentative old fogey, but the poor judgment of a still callow youth.
I'm pretty sure Tiger won't panic next time and repeat the same mistake. That means we can expect ten more years of Tiger hitting irons and five woods off the tee and shooting toward the center of the green on Sunday. That's how Jack won 18 majors and that's how Tiger will break his record.
Oh, we also can expect a few more second place finishes in majors for Tiger. It happens. It happened to Jack 19 times and now Tiger has six of his own.
Back to Chamblee and Rosaforte on the radio. Not once did these two geniuses mention the fact that Tiger was trying to win for the 3rd successive week. Do they realize that virtually no one in the history of golf has done this? In fact, it's possible that it's never been done.
The record for consecutive wins, of course, is 11 straight by Bryon Nelson, but I can find no mention of whether he won three successive weeks during the streak. He probably did, but he might not have.
For 50 years, Hogan was second place on this list with six consecutive wins. But again, I can't find any record of him winning in three successive weeks during that stretch.
Incredibly, Woods tied Hogan's second place record in 2000 by winning six straight. Then, even more incredibly, Tiger broke it with seven consecutive PGA wins in 2007. (And by the way, he also won five straight in 2006, something no one else has done either).
Again, it has been impossible for me to find this record online, but I'm pretty sure in neither streak did Tiger win in three successive weeks. If someone can clarify this for me, I would appreciate it.
The fact is that Tiger was trying to accomplish something that may have never been done in the history of the sport. And if it was, it was only achieved by Byron Nelson and maybe Hogan. It boggles my mind that nobody is even remotely acknowledging the challenge Woods was facing.
And of course, if you are trying to become perhaps the only golfer to win PGA tournaments in three successive weeks, isn't it that much more difficult if the third is a major?
That's why despite all the accolades heaped upon him, Tiger Woods remains the most underrated athlete in sports.
.jpg?w=480 "Colts Jaguars Football")
