Mid morning yesterday I went online to check how the PGA Championship was playing out. The headline, of course, concerned Tiger Woods. Apparently after 5 or 6 holes he was 3 under par. He was making a run. A little surprising, I thought. Fast forward to 1:02 PM ET. I turn on TSN (Canada’s ESPN) to watch some of the coverage live. One of the hosts is mentioning Tiger Woods. He says something about 10 over par. What? Okay, he’s not at 10 over par, he’s plus 10 over the last 9 holes. Holy crap! What the hell happened? Apparently about everything that could go wrong had. He was in the bunkers, sometimes more than one per hole. He was in the water more than once. Bogies and double bogies were all over the place. What a horrible collapse.
Tiger looked terribly frustrated. His body language was horrible and he clearly wanted to get off the course. What a totally alien feeling it must have been for him. His head is not in the right place in order to be competitive on the tour. It’s been a big question as to how the past 2 years has affected his frame of mind and now it’s becoming clearer. Tiger is definitely playing with the kind of self-doubt most of us carry with us throughout our lives. Just the kind of doubt that would creep into other PGA Tour players’ heads from time to time.
Tiger has always been different from other players. It can be said that he started a trend on the tour towards being more fit and athletic. What differentiated Tiger most of all from everyone else was the mental aspect of his game. He always had loads of confidence and almost superhuman focus. The more critical the situation, the bigger the moment, the more spectacular the shot he came up with. He always looked like he knew he was going to win. Now Tiger looks like he’s hoping to make a good shot.
On sports radio yesterday I heard Scott Van Pelt lamenting Woods’ situation and contemplating his place on the tour from now on. He wasn’t ready to accept that Woods might not be Tiger anymore. That he might not be capable of winning tournaments. Jason Whitlock was referring to it as the ‘end of and era’. It’s too early to come to that conclusion but not too early to think it might be possible his winning is in the past. It looks like down deep, Tiger doesn’t believe he’s Tiger anymore.
At the pre-tournament press conference on Wednesday, Woods was asked if he should lower his goals at this tournament like any other player would do, considering what’s gone on the past 2 years and the fact he was coming off an injury. Woods answered that he’s not other players. When you consider what we saw yesterday, he might not be other players, but right now he’s a lot more like them.
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