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Tiger Woods is Poised to Dominate
Written on July 21, 2010 at 06:57, by HTTN
After this past weekend’s British Open tournament, I started this post about Tiger Woods and the state of his game right now. Unfortunately, I got bored and sidetracked, but then this article was posted on SI.com by Joe Posnaski.
To boil his 500 or so words down to 1 thought: Tiger Woods, who is the owner of 13 career major titles, will not catch Jack Nicklaus’s 18.
Interestingly enough, I was writing exactly the opposite: just because Woods was not triumphant at St. Andrew’s, and has not won a tournament since his return to golf, don’t write him off just yet – he will very soon return to form.
The Short Stick:
Tiger’s lack of success at the British Open can pretty much be attributed to one club: his putter. Over the first three days, he hit 99 putts. For comparison, the eventual tournament winner, Louis Oosthuizen, hit 88 putts in the first three days, and really that was the difference between the two scores, as Woods sat 12 strokes back of Oosthuizen’s lead going into Sunday.
Why does this matter? In this year’s Masters and U.S. Open tournaments, Woods’ putting was fine. Actually, strong play with the short stick saved him and kept him in contention, while his other strokes were way off.
In his own words: “I drove it on a string all week and hit my irons pretty good.”
The Complete Game
To me, it’s very promising that after battling back issues and working hard to regain his old form, he’s finally feeling comfortable with his swing again.
Now, all he has to do is spend a few weeks focusing on his putter (whichever one it is he chooses to go with), and his game will be nicely rounded out.
With the WGC Bridgestone Invitational coming up on August 5, Tiger will have all the practice he needs to triumph in the year’s final major – the PGA Championship – starting on August 12. With his driver flowing the way it is now, and his killer putting stroke of old, Woods will once again light the golf world on fire, and major number 15 will only be the start of his return to dominance.
I make it sound so simple, don’t I? That’s because it is.
