Death, Taxes, and Tiger's Putter

By George White

So, Tiger just goes out and grabs another title. Hangs around on Sunday, doesn’t wow anybody with his shot-making, but never lets the leaders get out of his sight. It’s definitely not his A game, maybe not even his B game, but it’s definitely his A game mentally.
 
In fact, that’s probably the difference in Tiger Woods and the rest of the tour. Of course, he has the most complete game in the sport of golf. But he can’t play at his optimum every week, and that’s just a given fact. Golf just isn’t a sport that you can master every week. But Woods has the strongest mind in golf, and that is a part of the game in which he has no peers.
 

When it came time to putt an 8-footer on the 72nd hole that would allow him to get in a playoff, it of course went dead-center into the hole. I can’t remember the last time he missed a putt on the final hole that he absolutely had to make. He might miss them on the sixth hole, on the 21st hole, on the 61st hole or on the 71st hole. But he is the best in the game at knocking down the putt – be it from three feet or six feet or 10 feet– when he has to make an absolutely crucial one.
 
“That's one thing that Tiger is good at,” said Sergio Garcia. “Even when his game is not spot-on, you know that he can get in the hole and that he can get around.”
 
I’m not going to go back and look up the particlars on all 47 of his victories, but it seems that most of his wins the last five years came just this way. There was a time in 1999, 2000 and halfway though 2001 that he just blew everyone off the map. But since then, he really hasn’t needed to. He’s gotten so smart, and his skills are so accomplished, that he can just sit back and wait for the other guys to detonate.
 
Last year at this tournament he was down by two strokes to Luke Donald with only five holes to play – only to win in regulation. Remember John Daly in the playoff at American Express last year? He gagged on a short one in a playoff, and you-know-who was a very apologetic winner. Remember Chris DiMarco in the Masters? He didn’t get Woods put away when he had the chance, and eventually Tiger hit two superb shots to steal it. At Doral, he and Phil Mickelson both played brilliantly, but Tiger had to make a 6-footer at the last to seal it. And, of course, he did.
 
Which brings to mind the prime A No. 1 example - the playoff against Bob May in the 2000 PGA Championship. With May playing a brilliant round of golf, Woods stood on the 72nd hole and, just like Sunday, had an 8-footer that he surely, absolutely had to made. The look on his face as he lined it up was sheer terror, as it usually is. But when he stroked it, the putt homed in on the target and never wavered. Bingo!
 
Last week was so typically Tiger. All day Sunday he was just one of a number of guys hanging around the lead. And on 18 in regulation, he stood over the first putt 73 feet from the hole. This was where he might fail and three-putt – ANYONE might three-putt. And sure enough, he gassed the first putt to what looked at first like about 12-15 past the hole.
 
But it was just an optical illusion, one of the tricks of TV. Actually Tiger had only eight feet to the hole, well within his 'make it' range. And I don’t care if the greens were bumpy or how much of a break he had, Woods was going to dunk it – because he absolutely had to.