Stick-A-Fork-In Tiger Clippings, Volume 1
That didn't take long! One bad tournament and he's done!
Joe Posnanski on his Curiously Long Posts blog for SI pens a heartfelt, reasoned critique of Tiger from outside the ropes. The essence: are we in denial about the future of his game? It's a great read even if I think he's a bit premature. Though as he points out, when do we come to grips that things will never be the same?
But I think he is going to enter a new phase, where he will contend occasionally, like other golfers. He is going to enter a phase where it will be difficult to play well for four rounds. He is going to enter a phase where those 10-foot putts that were automatic will not be automatic anymore. I think things have changed for Tiger Woods, and they’re not going back. You can’t ever go back. And I don’t know how he is going to handle that. Nobody knows how he will handle it. Over the weekend, on one of his favorite courses, he looked lost. His swing was off. His short game was off. His putting was off. Yes, it was just his first tournament, but Tiger has always done really well in his first tournament — this was part of his game, he was always more ready to go when the seasons began than anyone else.
Anyway, what was as striking as anything was how uninterested he looked.
On that observation, Tiger's Sunday playing partner Brendan Steele would seem to agree, or so SI is saying they will report in this week's issue of Golf Plus.
"I don't think he gave it everything today," Steele told SI. "Once it started going in the wrong direction, I don’t think it had his full attention."
Meanwhile Steve Elling and John Huggan feast on Tiger in an entertaining Pond Scrum:
Elling: Blunt assessment time: I saw a guy who still can't string together four good rounds. He barely pieced together two good nines. Right now, Tiger Woods isn't one of the world's 40 best players. Last night in the San Diego airport, a bunch of scribes were actually discussing what would happen if he never made it back to anything close to his former levels at all. All of a sudden, it didn't sound like heresy.
Huggan: I'm perplexed. Tiger is supposed to have been (working) away since we last saw him at the Chevron and this is what he comes up with? He looked like Justin Leonard's idiot cousin. Can't drive. Can't chip. Can't putt. And let's not even get into his bunker play. Was he digging for buried treasure?
Elling: On Sunday, while he was carding his second-worst score on a course where he has won six of his last seven starts, I was trying to catalog his strengths during the week. Only thing he did above average was hit a few good long irons.
Huggan: Emphasis on a few. Most of the shots I saw were missing California, nevermind Torrey Pines.
Sally Jenkins offers a more diplomatic but essentially similar take:
It will be interesting to see if Woods, in his work with Foley, can really recover the swing of his own youth. Do yourself a favor and pull up some old footage of Woods, back when he was a collegiate player and U.S. Amateur champion. It’s a joy to watch. That kid, all elbows and knees, thwacked at the ball with such unconscious, unthinking pleasure. Now pull up modern footage, and you’ll be struck by the difference, how much stiffer he seems, how much he’s fighting his own body.
At this point, Woods’ swing looks over-taught, and over-thought. Through the years, Woods has gotten steadily more mechanical, as well as visibly stronger and more muscular. Woods’ perfectionism has been his greatest strength, but you have to wonder if all that seeking of improvement, his constant preoccupation with the technical, always serves him so well. Maybe the greatest player in the world overperfected his swing. It would be nice to see a more natural Woods.
Monday, January 31, 2011 at 09:39 PM
Reader Comments (34)
01.31.2011 | chico
That is just COLD ;)
Also I think the Jenkins articles makes some interesting points, but there are so many obvious factual errors it makes it difficult to take seriously (and this seems to be true in general of a lot of the golf media).
Yes, Tiger was clearly horrible at Torrey (a place where he has had a lot of success in the past), but just over a week ago in Abu Dhabi, Mickelson looked miserable, and Westwood was even worse. Prior to Torrey TW had finished top 15 in his last 6 starts and top 10 in the last 3. So a little perspective would be a welcome change, before Elling decides that right now he's not one of the top 50 golfers in the world.
Quite a few greats in almost every area have lost what brought them to the dance. Down here, it's called "he followed a wagon off."
Writers, athletes, filmmakers, musicians and others that hit stardom often derail due to adulation, fireworks and a feeling that it will always be that way.
Perhaps Eldrick will find it and "dance with who brung him."
Value anyones opinion
John
Chico, I read that, and my thoughts were exactly as were Jay's ....... Cold :)
Maybe a little shovel and a plastic bucket need to be added to Foley's swing training devices.
I immediately thought , "Thats may have been a horrific lie, but he thought he could execute it- and he looked like me."
If he's lost some power and loses some touch- whats left?
He's strong willed and stubborn as they come, so maybe he turns the ship around but he's got to be having self doubts and when you're TW, there's no room for self doubt.
As Jagger and Richards put it, "Time waits for no man…"
As another poster brilliantly put it "Tiger is playing swing not golf right now."
Tiger needs to enter more tournaments and actually try his swing changes in a lower tier/lower pressure tournament and not on the stage of the majors or a WGC event after playing sporadically
Jack Nicklaus finished 79th on the Money List in 1979 (aged 39), looking washed up and uniterested the whole way. But he made a few changes in both his full swing and his short game with Phil Rodgers, and came back to win both the US Open and the PGA the year after, and continued to contend regularly in majors until his epic Masters win at age 46 in ´86.
Another forgotten player in the comeback department is Greg Norman. After getting beat to a pulp by Faldo at S:t Andrews in 1990 (aged 35), he entered a long slump, finishing 53rd on the Money List in ´91 and only getting one W, a very scrappy one in Canada in ´92. But he began working with Butch Harmon and came back in ´93 a much better and steadier player than he was before. The three-year period between Doral in ´93 and Augusta in ´96 was probably the strech in his career when he played his best golf, even though he continued to get burned royally in majors...
In other words, a Tiger comeback with a new teacher would be far from unprecedented.
What will the general perception be if he drops out of the top 10 in the world rankings? Will that be the official "writing off" point?
I believe that folks are prematurely writing his golf epitah, which I consider somewhat sad and callous and also a bit bizarre ( bizarre, because I sense the tone of almost devlish glee, and get rid of the $%$% SOB.)
Again I would say, let this 2011 play out and if he does not win a Major or a tournament, then since you must "bury him". Until then why not give the Tiger Woods story a rest and allow it to happen regardless of how we view it.
Personally fo someone with such wondrous talent, I would like to see him bring back the talent and play well once again. So I hope he does not quit.
I do sincerely hope he finds his form again. I love playing the game, but watching it can be a real chore. Without Tiger, it's incredibly boring. I know I'm not in the minority with this opinion. Hell, even with him in his present form it's still pretty boring.
That's all gone now, and he's become ordinary.
I think it's unlikely that his magic will return, but I won't say it's impossible. I predict he has some sort of early-40s resurgence, as Nicklaus did.
Or, did he just offer his opinion unasked.
If he was answering a question, and did so honestly, isn't that what people would like?