Break Down On Why Tiger Is Dominant

I know I told you that I would have an NCAA Tourney preview on Monday but a couple of things prevented that from happening. One, I went out on Sunday night to my favorite watering hole in all the land, Maloney’s. If you are ever in downtown Albuquerque, swing by 4th and Central and stop in for a Viking sized beer. No really, it’s a liter of beer in a mug. So delicious and thirst quenching. Second, and more important reason for pushing back the tourney preview is one Mr. Eldrick 'Tiger' Woods and it is he that we will be discussing today. So give me one to two days to review all the regions, match ups and so forth. Then I shall provide you with a tidy little preview to the 'Madness.'

So this past weekend was The Bay Hill Invitational, a yearly PGA Tour event held at Arnold Palmer’s course in Florida. Now, you may recall in my introductory post I fawned over Tiger Woods pretty heavily. Some of you might have thought it to be a bit much but if you, by chance, happened to watch the final round at Bay Hill on Sunday then you now know what I was talking about. First of all Tiger has not lost a tournament since last August. He has won the last six tournaments he has entered in. I mean how ridiculous is that? Most of the schlubs and lifers that currently make up the PGA tour would kill to have a season where they win a couple of events, maybe a few top tens. I mean that really is a good season. Now I swing back to Tiger . . . he has won the last six events he has been in. He’s won the last two majors and is the odds on favorite to win The Masters in three weeks. He is playing golf at such a stratospheric level right now that the other guys on tour would be better off bludgeoning him with a pitching wedge to keep him under control. Scary thing is he would probably still find a way to win.

At Bay Hill, Friday night found Tiger seven shots off the lead heading into the weekend. He wasn’t playing poorly . . . but he wasn’t playing very well either. Oddly enough, despite the seven shot deficit heading into the weekend I found myself thinking that if Tiger heats up there is no reason he can’t steam roll the field. Well it didn’t turn out exactly the way I thought. It was more like a combination of events that propelled him to a five-way tie for the lead by the end of Saturday’s 3rd round. A number of players that were above Tiger on the leader board just simply fell apart. On the front nine Saturday, Vijay Singh dropped five shots over a four-hole stretch. I am no Vijay Singh lover at all, in fact the only he thing that he does that I like is that he smokes, but players like Vijay Singh do not drop five shots in four holes. A number of other players were not playing particularly well either. Tiger however, went out and shot -4 under 66, with two ridiculously good iron shots at 15 and 16 that resulted in a 2-ft putt for birdie and a 3-ft putt for birdie on two of the toughest holes on the course. Hard to describe unless you saw them but he knocked them stiff.

Sunday found Tiger in the final pairing, wearing his famous Sunday red 'money' shirt, tied with four other golfers at the start of the round. On the second hole, he bagged a 15-ft putt for birdie to take a lead that he would never relinquish. That does not mean the victory or the lead was assured. On 10, Tiger had a mystifying three putt which resulted in a bogey and a tie with relative unknown, Bart Bryant. I don’t know where this collection of no name stiffs, like Bryant, come from to challenge Tiger every once and a while. They probably come from central casting for all things warm, fuzzy and full of inspirational goodness. Bryant and Woods basically matched each other on the back nine..birdie for birdie, par for par. The announcer’s glee at the proposition of someone 'challenging' Tiger was growing by the hole. Which brings us to 18, a very challenging and difficult hole to close on. Bryant plays it (he was in the group ahead of Tiger) and comes up with solid par. Nice drive..nice iron shot...nice putting. A well played hole by Bryant. So if Tiger pars the 18th hole, he and Bryant will have a playoff, if he birdies then Tiger wins. Simple enough. Tiger steps to the 18th tee and bombs one down the left side of the fairway. Before his 2nd shot into the green..the wind really picked up, making an already difficult shot over water even more treacherous. My guess is that things like that only embolden Tiger to execute a perfect shot. Which is exactly what he did. He took his five iron and launched an approach shot that landed about 25 ft to the left of the cup...which is the only safe place to land a shot if you can’t afford to bogey the hole. Now the announcers spent the next 5 minutes talking about how Tiger had not made a putt of over 19ft all tournament long.....which is exactly the moment that I started thinking that this one was going in. You just get feelings like that about Tiger if you watch him enough. Anyway he was 0-21 all tournament long on putts of 19ft or more and this was a 25 ft putt. But it was for the win. So Tiger takes his requisite time, studies the putt from 5 gillion angles and steps up to the ball and taps it. Right off the bat, I can sense it is on line and I as I watch it approach the hole and slow down, I scream at the tv ' Get in f’ing hole!'.. The ball, as if on cue, stops right at the edge of the cup for a split second....and then drops in. Pandemonium ensues. Tiger has always been an emotional guy on the course when he makes big putts and such but he was extra pumped today. When the ball dropped in, a yelling Tiger took his hat off and spiked it on the ground like a football and then turned to the crowd and gave them his trademark fist pump with both arms. Crowd going wild, Tiger going wild and in the background, Arnold Palmer stood smiling with a bemused look on his face that basically said ‘I knew that was going to happen’. This is why I love to watch golf anytime that Tiger Woods is playing, because for the last seven months it has been nothing short of must watch tv and a talent like this only comes around once in a lifetime. I certainly want to watch and be able to tell my kids that I saw, arguably, one of the most dominant and best athletes of all time. See you in three weeks at Augusta, Tiger. :)