Everyone who has ever picked up a golf club has an opinion on Tiger's on course woes and I'm no different. So despite being dreadfully unqualified to opine on this, here goes!
After Tiger's worst ever round of 85 the CBSl set was looking about as cheery as a gas chamber. Every was horrified by the vomitus performance they had seen wretched at the feet of the golden bear.
Then something weird happened, Tiger spoke and people wanted to seen the disgust and anguish on his face, but he was... Ok. He said he wasn't too far off. Everyone thought this was a pile of BS. I am sure though that even though the score he shot was about equal to a so so round for a 10 handicap, Tiger is right, he is not very far off.
A few years ago after a gross 82, Michelle Wie said their wasn't much difference between a 82 and a 69, everyone thought she was delusional but a short while later she figured it out and was back on track to filling her potential.
Tigers score of 85 was horrible, but for the most part his play was not that poor. He is still making birdies and he is still making a lot of pars. His issue like so many of us is the random blow up hole. The golfer that shoots 85 making very few birdies and lots of 1 over bogeys is much further away from good golf than the golfer that makes a fair share of birds and pars but suffers too many blow ups.
These Blow Ups come from one-off horrendous shots that are not slight, but HUGE misses, Tiger reacts to these misses exactly like you would expect a man with low course confidence to react and compounds the pain and what should be a bogey all the sudden becomes a limitlessly astronomical number.
VERY often, when someone is playing fairly well except for some blow up holes the problem is a too violent or too whippy transition. This was the case for Rickie Fowler, butch changed a few things including his transition and short haired he now has MANY less doubles and triples than the long haired Fowler had.
Sergio is one of the great ballstrikers of our day but still suffers that one off huge miss that leads to big numbers like when he double crossed himself out of a win at Rivera earlier this year. Under the gun, Sergio's change of direction gets sloppier and more violent.
I think this is what Tiger is going through. He is pretty focused on hitting certain positions in the golf swing and being position focused wrecks your transition because the more pressure yours under the wuick you just want to snap into the position you are trying to hit. Your timing and sequencing gets wrecked and all the sudden Nick Faldo is crying on TV again.
The fix.
Forget positions and focus on intent. The correct intent had to be found out bye each individual golfer but you can play with you mind on an intent, it is tough to play well trying To hit positions.
I watched tiger at the range in 2007 hit full swing 7 irons from 60 yards to 212 yards all flushed solid. His tempo and transition were impeccable. Try it yourself, hitting a 7 iron solid and just 90 yards while making a full turn and full swing is really hard to do, your body needs to know yours swing inside and out.
Now instead of doing that we see Tiger spending a lot of range time on trackman and looking at the iPad numbers.
I think he would be much better served working on nothing but tempo, transition and touch until the U.S. Open at Chambers Bay starts.
Tiger is close, he will not figure it out by the U.S. Open but I guarantee you will see him show up at the PGA championship or British Open this year.
RSS Feed
