PGA Tour: Back, back, back, Is Woods Really BACK?: Notes from the Ballwasher

First topic message reminder :

1).Tiger Woods has his most impressive win at least since the 2008 US Open, in my book since the 2007 PGA Championship at Southern Hills.
The TPC Sawgrass course, which he admittedly finds "tricky" and which one might think he'd have rather not played, saw him squeak out a win pretty much by doing a "Hoylake", striking tee-shots with an industrial strength 5-wood or long iron, hitting greens (3rd in gir for the week) and scrambling superbly (6th for the week).
He holed his putts without making anything outrageous and challenged his immediate competition to make mistakes - and they obliged, Maggert hitting the water on #17 for the first time since 2002 and Garcia attempting the perfect shot, twice, when merely average would have been adequate. Intimidation? You'd certainly think so.
So: Is Tiger really back to his best?

2).There's been a deluge of opinion in the US media these past three days and consensus seems to centre around two criteria:
~He won't prove he's back to the pre-injury "Tiger" until he's started to win Majors again.
~He doesn't dominate tournaments the way he once did.

3).No argument about the first, but Merion, Muirfield and Oak Hill could see that change. Much is made of Merion's narrow fairways and tricky greens but Woods may not care - if he can nuke his 5-wood 300 yards, how many times will he need his driver, still the biggest weakness in his bag?
Muirfield did him in in 2002, when he (mis)fired a third round 81, while Oak Hill ate him up in 2003 as he never broke par trailing home in 39th.
So perhaps Merion will be his best bet although I can imagine his strongest opposition being Tiger Woods himself.

4).Tournament domination? Well, yes, he certainly DID dominate some tournaments from time to time but his average winning margin at Torrey Pines (3 strokes) and Doral (one stroke) was exceeded this year (4 and 3 respectively). He's only won The Players once before (by a shot) but Bay Hill his winning margin has averaged 4 strokes, rather than this year's two.
Let's face it, he's won four top tournaments this year by a total of ten shots. I'd say he's dominated each one even if he relied on intestinal fortitude (or lack of it) to outlast Fowler and Garcia.

5).What about playing stat's?
Apart from the fact that he doesn't dominate the driving distance stat like he used to, he's #1 in putting and #1 in par five scoring, perhaps the two biggest keys to Tiger's success. He's a little behind his best pace for hitting greens in regulation but sand play so far is better than ever and he's scrambling well also.

6).What about the competition?
Would say that gets better every year, inspired by Tiger's achievements as much as anything. Garcia matched Woods shot for shot last week until trying to squeeze too much out of #17, and Fowler kept pace at Bay Hill until falling victim to the same misplaced ambition. Who has the fortitude to go head-to-head with Woods and beat him a la Beem and/or Yang? Certainly Mickelson last year at Pebble Beach but no-one since.

7).Prospects going forward? He just "committed" to Memorial and then Merion. I'd say we could yet see a 6- or even 8-win season without a Major. 4/1-ish currently to win the US Open looks about right to me.

8).The fact that McIlroy, Garcia and Woods (and probably others that were shown less frequently) managed their way round Pete Dye's TPC Sawgrass whilst only hitting driver two or three times suggest the course is becoming outdated and expect some strategic hole-lengthening soon. Still don't understand why several holes were shortened for Sunday's final round. Why?

9).The "HP Byron Nelson Classic" starts Thursday, just outside Dallas, one of the best-run tournaments on Tour, but with a lousy date and a comparitively poor field. Some top players will play (last three winners Day, Bradley and Dufner, plus Kuchar, Oosthuizen, Schwartzel) but most who took on the TPC have either headed for Europe or are sitting this one out. Good to see Siem in the field, plus compatriot Kaymer; and Robert Karlsson is coming off his 4th place finish at Quail Hollow.
But why no Ross Fisher who seems to have gone to Europe for three weeks? Only eight tournaments opportunities left for Fish to finish his season in the top 125 . . . . . .
The Texas contingent will be out in force led by Ryan Palmer, and Palmer should be good value. I also like Martin Flores, JJ Henry and Jeff Overton, while Aussies Jason Day and Leishman both play well here.

10).And: The "America" IFQ Open Championship is scheduled for next Monday in Dallas, at the ironically named Gleneagles GC, with Jonas Blixt and Brian Davis leading the European entries (assuming Martin Laird stays in the owgr Top 60 which doubtless he will).
Upcoming owgr qualifying deadlines include:
US Open: owgr Top 60 as at May 27th (and June 10th).
Open Championship: owgr Top 50 as at May 27th.

I know, I did say I wouldn't post on the golf boards again, but just got to say......anyone to win but that annoying Keegan Bradley!!!!!!!!!

Jpx, any tiffs around here are forgotten quickly, come and join in the fun!

and yes, I'm rooting for Bae. anything but Bradley's interminable twitching. It'll be a sad day for golf if Keegan wins.

incontinentia wrote: It'll be a sad day for golf if Keegan wins.

In case anyone has forgotten, USA IFQ for the Open Championship is being held outside of Dallas tomorrow.

Here are the tee times

http://www.theopen.com/en/Qualification/InternationalFinalQualifying.aspx?draw=America

GPB:
Imagine Points might be able to avoid it?

C'mon Mr. Bae, don't spoil it now at the end...

Good finish for Kaymer, not good for Marcel... that collapse may come back to haunt him...

kwinigolfer wrote:Morgan Hoffmann and John Daly teed off in the same twosome:
Hoffmann currently T5.
Daly currently T66.

One with a bright future, the other who probably can't remember the brilliant future he once had.

Starting to really grate on me now how many "invitations" that waste of space Daly gets. He cannot even play 4 rounds of golf anymore. Somebody tell me the last time he didn't go down in flames over the weekend.

Robert Karlsson is still showing as entered for the BMW too? Unless the European Tour site just lists those entered if they confirmed or not?

blistering,
Daly was in as of right this time; not a deep field and earned his spot by virtue of money won last year.
(But I agree with you, unfortunately as hate to see a talent self-destruct.)

Yep, Martin Laird too.

Here are the players ranked inside the top 100 qualifying tomorrow:

D.A. Points, Martin Laird, Marc Leishman, Jimmy Walker, Luke Guthrie, Greg Chalmers, Kyle Stanley,John Merrick

Sang-Moon Bae will also be well inside the top 100 when he tees off tomorrow.

I like Jimmy Walker chances of getting a backdoor invite into the O.C. if he doesn't qualify tomorrow. He seems to be on the fringe of contention every week. He did have a poor round today.

It looks like Freddie Jac, Billy Horschel and Tim Clark think they are is going to be in the top 50 by the time Week 21 rankings come out.

Any rumours on the decision regarding the anchored putting will it be banned or not!?

Very impressive win for Sang Moon Bae. Nice to see that he immediately took off his ball cap when Mrs Nelson greeted him as he was walking to scoring tent. That was a touch of class!

Anchored putting: Consensus seems to be there'll be an announcement to ban it on Tuesday. Date uncertain, and whether there'll be agreement from the Champions Tour to adopt it seems highly questionable.

Agree about Bae - very impressive, first of quite a few I'd imagine.

Oh right, that would be a shame Kwini. On the side of the people who use anchored putting.

Bradley -1 for the last 3 days.....must be gutted to let go of a good chance.

Yeah, I don't like anchored putting but there are a helluva lot of things I like a whole lot worse - thinking god is a fifteenth club is one of them. But so are long, jumbo-headed drivers, trampoline fairway woods and slow play.
The USGA announcing their investigation in to slow play will take a year just about sums it up. Farce.

I'm expecting pushback from the PGA Tour, at least for the Senior guys, so it'll be an interesting few days.

High time that Bradley came with a health warning!

Re anchoring and the seniors; does it really matter to the health of the game whether or not they bifurcate?

Senior PGA Championship this week gael, at Bellerive in St.Louis - sure "anchoring" will be the talk of the town.

kwini ... I'm sure you won't have failed to have noticed how quiet Bernhard has been on the subject of anchoring.

Seems to me they were in all likelihood intent on ignoring the ban all along.

Scores after Round 1 of The Open Championship America IFQ:

http://scoring.theopen.com/scores_qual.sps?pageid=10&iTourNo=2013004&iTourId=7&Type=4

The live scoring is here:
http://scoring.theopen.com/scores_qual.sps?pageid=10&iTourNo=2013104&iTourId=7&optsel=pos&Type=3

Eventful stuff from Davis but a par down the last will do the job for him. Karlsson stumbling late, will have an anxious wait now. A decent finish in a major would do wonders for his bid to keep his card, too.

Birdie up the last will do the job even more, good stuff Brian

Looks like Karlsson will have to contend with a Play-off. Leading 8 qualify.

PS: Davis ran a streak of six birdies in Round One, after opening with a double bogey.

I was going to post on how many WDs there were was going to be in the IFQ in Dallas.

I am counting 26 or a 1/3 of the field.

Kudos to Gary Woodland who finished 36 holes despite shooting 77 in Round 1.

Are the tee times locked in or will they try to make everyone a threesome?

1.Teater
T2: Villegas
T2: Wagner
T4:Davis
T4:Brown
T6:Karlsson
T6:Guthrie
T6:Cauley
T6:But lost play-off, Columbia's Andres Echavarria

Due to all the withdrawals, Dicky Pride played Round 2 as a lonesome onesome.

Sergio stirring the Tiger pot again, this time in an interview with Golf.com:
"He called me a whiner. He's probably right. But that's also probably the first thing he's told you that's true in fifteen years. I know what he's like. You guys are finding out."

After Woods saying he's not going to make a truce with Garcia, you'd think Finchem will be calling the two of them. Headlines fast sinking from the sports pages to the gutter.

Pleased for Karlsson - apparently he holed a 15-footer in the play-off to advance.

fair play to Sergio for speaking his mind, especially against one of the most powerful people in sport.

I like the fact that there's some needle between the players. All the nicey, nicey sh!t is a bit puke inducing.

I saw Woods interviewed and they asked if he'd considered speaking to Garcia to try and smooth things over.

One word answer "No." (said with a wry smile) Thought it was very amusing.

kwinigolfer wrote:Sergio stirring the Tiger pot again, this time in an interview with Golf.com:
"He called me a whiner. He's probably right. But that's also probably the first thing he's told you that's true in fifteen years. I know what he's like. You guys are finding out."

After Woods saying he's not going to make a truce with Garcia, you'd think Finchem will be calling the two of them. Headlines fast sinking from the sports pages to the gutter.

How bitter and twisted is Garcia, seriously. Also its pretty clear that Woods and Garcia have never got on, which makes you wonder why Garcia thinks he is the person to be able to tell the world what Woods is really like ?

Did Woods spokesman give the wry smile on Woods behalf?

Not at all Super. All his own work and much the better for it.

BS how two amateur organisations can decide something so big in the sport, shame they are banning the anchored putting.

The USGA AND RNA and the MASTERS committee sums up all that is wrong with the game.

Does this mean the Long putter is totally banned!? The BBC said the broomhandle and the anchored putting.

Garcia obviously not confident that he can let "his game" do the talking. And given his pathetic finish last time he competed against Tiger who can blame him?

sirbenson wrote:The USGA AND RNA and the MASTERS committee sums up all that is wrong with the game.

Does this mean the Long putter is totally banned!? The BBC said the broomhandle and the anchored putting.

My my, quite an outburst considering how little you seem to know about this "game".

Bellies and broomhandles not banned ... just the method viz anchoring.

Not really an outburst an opinion and just cause I happen to disagree with the decision doesn't make my opinion wrong.

And you don't know how much I know about the game either!

sirbenson wrote:Not really an outburst an opinion and just cause I happen to disagree with the decision doesn't make my opinion wrong.

And you don't know how much I know about the game either!

Ok then, why don't you enlighten me. Exactly what did you mean by this ...

The USGA AND RNA and the MASTERS committee sums up all that is wrong with the game.

I also know very little about the game, but this looks like a bone-headed decision to me, surely not in the top ten list of things the R&A and USGA should be spending their time on?

Haven't seen anything yet from the PGA and/or the PGA Tour - if the Tour accepts the ban, when will they apply it, and will they apply it at all for the Champions Tour??

As the ban is effective January 1st 2016, it's highly unlikely the PGA Tour would implement the ban during their 2015/2016 season so there's almost bound to be "bifurcation" for a few months - and with so many pundits, from Woods on down (or up depending on which way you look at it) saying they should implement asap to avoid anchorers being branded as "cheats", will they try to cut it in earlier?

PGA Tour statement says it acknowledges the USGA/R&A decision, will review internally and not comment until their review process is concluded, probably in one month's time.

The immediate impact of this decision will be felt by those junior and aspiring professional golfers who currently anchor. Look for them to adopt a new putting style.

I hope this isn't the ruination of Guan's career

No doubt Shotrock, especially those College Golf Teams for whom the USGA-sanctioned 6-hour rounds are just fine!


Severe storms expected in the Fort Worth area today, possible tornado action. Ironic that the good people of tornado alley are the most likely to elect those politicians most vehemently opposed to do anything about global warning and America's dependence upon fossil fuels. Senators Inhofe of Oklahoma and Cruz of Texas among the very worst practioners of such head-in-the-sand stupidity.

incontinentia wrote:I hope this isn't the ruination of Guan's career

If a 14 year old can't adapt, then the other pros really are in trouble.

Yeah - but he's been working on that style since he was a boy

Such a long time ago.

First rumblings of a player lawsuit against the USGA as Brendan Steele suggests there may be some action on that front later this week.
But: Should they really be suing the USGA or the PGA Tour? If anyone, of course.

Maybe Tiger should sue for not being allowed to drop his ball wherever he feels like?

he can drop wherever he wants thats the problem!

Did I hear that Wimbledon will be banning the two handed back hand in 2016 because Borg, Connors, and Evert started to win that Championship 40 years ago using that technique?

"Fair play to Sergio for speaking his mind, especially against one of the most powerful people in sport."
Seriously? A pat on the back for that? Pathetic.
Let's face it Sergio is just another petulent little pratt who cannot stop himself from handing the initiative to Woods, and now he has done it again.