Tiger’s a mere mortal now

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 14/07/2010 (5875 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

ST. ANDREWS, Scotland — There are two ways to look at Tiger Woods’ chances of winning the 150th anniversary edition of the Open Championship, and each has merit, and each has flaws, and — this being golf, after all — each amounts to little more than a series of guesses.

But two clues are especially worrisome, if you’re thinking of wagering the house.

The first is that the weather could be foul for at least one and maybe two of the four rounds at the Old Course this week, and Woods is not much of a mudder.

But the second is the one that ought to set off the fire alarm: for the first time in 11 years, the world’s No. 1 player is forsaking his trusty Titleist/Scotty Cameron putter this week for a different instrument, a Nike — and if that’s not a sign of the kind of desperation that only mere mortals routinely experience, what is?

More pace

The ball, he said, comes off the Nike’s face with more pace, which he feels he needs on the slower greens typically seen on British Open courses. He’s only won three of them with the other putter, but never mind.

"I’ve always struggled on slower greens," he said. "My stroke, even when I was a junior golfer, has always felt more comfortable when the greens get quick. This putter does come off faster, with the new groove technology."

Yup. The Nike putter has grooves.

"It rolls the ball faster and rolls it better. So I’ve had to make very little adjustment to how hard I’m hitting it compared to if I had my older putter."

That’s the theory, anyway.

And there’s nothing wrong with it, if you are of the glass-half-full persuasion which cleaves to the fact that, for all his physical, mental and extra-marital troubles, Tiger has still tied for fourth in each of his first two post-scandal majors, without playing particularly well in either one.

If you accept his word that he’s getting closer all the time to finding his old form, and throw in the Old Course venue as a further sweetener to the argument, since he’s won the last two Opens played on the St. Andrews signature links, it shouldn’t be a stretch to pick him to win, and indeed, the bookmakers have installed him as the favourite, at odds of 5-to-1.

However, from the glass-half-empty vantage point — the habitual choice of this column — the Tiger Woods of 2010 is a mere shadow of the 2000 model who didn’t hit a single one of the Old Course’s 112 bunkers in any of his four rounds (that’s 0-for-448) while winning by eight shots. Or even the 2005 version, who won by five.

Doesn’t carry himself the same, swing with the same rhythm, putt with the same certainty.

He is not mentally as strong, can’t seem to will the ball into the hole the way he used to make every single putt he absolutely had to make, and has morphed — in his athletic middle age — into a world-class complainer and excuse-maker, which he never used to be.

Pouting

His pouting over Pebble Beach’s bouncy poa annua greens at last month’s U.S. Open, the same greens on which he won the 2000 edition, was bad enough, but his observation that Pebble was a completely different golf course this time — prompting one wag to mutter: "Yeah, the ocean used to be on the right side of 18" — caused a good deal of eye-rolling amusement.

Fellow competitors don’t dissolve into a pool of nerves when they see his name on a leaderboard now, because he is every bit as capable of a mental mistake as anyone else. They know it, and he knows it. He looks, for lack of a better phrase, self-conscious on the golf course now, less sure of himself, and he never used to give a rat’s butt what anyone else thought.

He can always count on respectful treatment from the golfing public, but it’s the voice from between his own ears he now struggles to control.

Winnipeg Free Press | Newsletter

Mike McIntyre | On Sports

Thursdays

Keep up to date on sports with Mike McIntyre's weekly newsletter.

Sign up for Mike McIntyre | On Sports

Sign Up

I consent to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies.

I consent to CASL agreement.

Ernie Els, whose career has been interwoven with Tiger’s for 15 years, doesn’t see the same golfer he saw a decade ago, but then, Woods in 2000 was like nothing before, or since.

On his day, Woods is probably still the best player, Els said. But he hasn’t had that day in quite some time.

And a full-fledged resurrection, on demand, is a lot to ask of the Old Course’s magic.

— Postmedia News