Tiger Woods
How can the best player of our times not be able to hit a driver straight. I put this in the category of Bill Belichick not being able to put together a decent defense for the last 3 years. You could also argue for both the Patriots and Tiger Woods that they're not even moving in the right direction over that time period.
Stay tuned, we're just hitting the back 9 on Sunday in the greatest rivalry ever and witnessing the beginning of the next one!
Greg should know better than to talk about the other Captain's picks. Maybe he's been watching to much NFL, NHL and NBA and has forgotten the respect the game deserves. Or, maybe, he's just trying to stick it in the face of the Golfing Gods that took so many Green Jackets from him!
Since he was 5, Tiger won or almost won everything. If he narrowly missed, he came back next time and destroyed the field. That's been the one constant in his game...until now. That's the unfamiliar, uncharted territory he has to cross to get back to where he was and his friend Freddy Couples is trying to tell him that. I can imagine Freddy telling him 'I've been down so many times that I know a lot more about coming back than you do. Take it from me, your friend, you've got to go play tournaments, lots of tournaments to get back to numero uno. Practicing in obscurity is not going to cut it'.
With the majority of 2 years forfeited, Tiger has to start playing lots of competitive golf if he wants to get back on top and his friend Freddy is clearly trying to give him a push in the right direction!
Given Tiger's time away from the game this year already, I don't expect him to be win anything in 2011 even if he does come back. It's going to take a full off season of getting ready and a decent early season schedule for him to return to form.
The big question is still whether Tiger will beat Jack's record in the Majors. We now know for sure that Tiger will not return to playing the way he did prior to 2009. Why? He's got physical limitations. His swing style and the nature of modern golf have caught up to him. During the Masters interviews Tiger finally said very explicitly that he had to change his swing because he couldn't physically swing the old way anymore. How did this happen?.
We have Jack Nicklaus to thank for that. No, he didn't hit Tiger in the knees with a baseball bat. What ...
I'm still waiting for Tiger to open up a little when he's interviewed, but that appears to be a club he doesn't carry in his bag. I could believe that he was actually changing his psyche if he'd move off the scripted text in these interviews and let the force fields down a bit. Looks like the only way we'll know more about Tiger is to watch how he plays.
Is it me, or do current tournament winners seem to be whoever can hang on not who can mount a charge on Sunday? In the final analysis, too many rich tournament purses may have attracted too many good athletes to the game. Combine that with golf's fickle nature and you get- BORING! In this case, I hope I'm wrong.
Tiger's chipping was much better than it was at Torrey Pines. His putting started to look sharp as well and was better than the stats might indicate. He just missed or lipped out a lot of putts that could have just as easily gone in. Don't forget that he bested both Lee Westwood and Martin Kaymer when he was paired with them for the first two rounds. Beating number 1 and 2 in the world for 2 days had to do a lot for his confidence.
