First off let me begin by apologzing to our fan; singular. While I don’t know what Mike and Neil were doing, I got very very busy with school and neglected to write anything for months, in fact I missed most of the NBA finals because I would pass out from study exhaustion about a quarter of the way into the game. It may not seem like much of an excuse but, I am a medical student first and everything else comes in a distant second. Good news though, I had my last final friday and now have eight weeks of freedom to celebrate and pretty much do nothing but write about sports all day (this free time may turn into an interesting event for our fans: details to come later).
Now I know we have missed a lot of sporting events this year due to our disappearing act but I would like to keep it current and talk about the rainy US open and my favorite golfer Tiger Woods. No one can argue with the fact that Tiger is the greatest golfer of all time, he has an unshakable concentration and a wonderful all around golf game. He also works harder than any other athlete, he reportly puts 10 hours a day into practice and working out, everday, no exceptions. Honestly though, I think he is losing it and we can’t blame it on the knee. Yes, he has won tournaments this year including the Memorial, but only one of the wins was in the accustomed “Tiger-style”. Look at his first win of the year, the Arnold Palmer invitational, he did not so much win it as Sean O’Hair lost it. His other win at the memorial, that was impressive, he looked like the old Tiger and hit every fairway, he almost made it look like he was playing his video game. His other outings, however, not so impressive, for Tiger anyway. He did finish eighth at the masters and sixth at the players, which is fantastic for any golfer professional or otherwise, but it is somewhat lacking for Tiger.
In all of the other tournaments he has played this year, we have nothing but a seemingly awkward and random bag of shot selections. His putting has been off, granted he missing by less an inch right or left everytime, but these are putts we are used to seeing Tiger make. This is where we can’t blame the knee, pulling or pushing balls to the left and right does take a lot of full body strength and puts a lot of strain on all of the joints, but Tiger has been making those shots with ease, in fact his driving has become more dangerous because how strongly he can shape a ball on his “new” knee. In fact it his remarkable ability to recover from bad shots that keeps him near the top of the leaderboard in all of these tournaments. Putting, on the other hand, is something of a simple motion and, obviously, has the largest impact on the game; let’s also add that putting surface is where the game is won or lost.
The question remains, however, is the apparent loss of putting skill due to the loss of last season and all of his practice time? Or is this all just age? Granted Tiger probably has another ten years on tour, assuming he and his family avoid any major problems. I do have to stress that even in his current state he is one damn amazing golfer but it begs the question are we every going to see the old Tiger again? And, I mean the Tiger that won 6 majors in two years. Or, are we going see the Tiger that went on a three year drought without any major wins? All I can really say to the affirmative, the next couple of seasons are going to be interesting ones for golf fans everywhere.
As a side not separate from the article, I wish the Mickelson family all the best and hope everything goes well.
