Tiger By the Tail

I spent a rare Sunday watching the final holes of the Masters. Rare in that there is usually some other thing going on. But not Sunday.

First, kudos to Thew for calling this ages ago. But Sunday's Tiger was not the Tiger of old - in 1997, his first Masters win, Tiger was -18 and beat Tom Kite by 12 strokes. His back to back victories (2001 and 2002) he was -16 and -12 beating David Duval and Retief Goosen by 2 and 3 strokes respectively. The "old" Tiger was chipping at 16, the "new" Tiger was driving on 17 and 18.

Honestly, though, I don't think Tiger has gotten worse as much as the field has gotten better. A better field means more pressure and the greater the chance of getting it wrong. In fact, if Tiger drives a ball 325 yards, he has a 19% greater chance of getting in the rough then a pro driving it 275 yards. Think about that, almost 1 in 5 will statistically be in the rough more. And that does not factor in the accuracy "bell curve" (i.e., a pro is more likely to hit an accurate shot that a stray shot). But it was good to see Tiger with the Green Jacket.

Unfortunately, it had to be at Chris DiMarco's expense. I do believe that DiMarco will lose the BPNTWAM label soon.

But this segues into a pet peeve of mine - that you have to move the tees way back to Tiger-proof a course. Nonsense. What you have to do is narrow the fairways and grow the rough really high. Distance is nothing without accuracy, hence the phrase "Long and Wrong." (Which I used to be before I became "Short and Wrong.") As I talked about above, with a 50 yard fairway and a straight ball flight, you have 8.8 degrees (4.4 on each side of center) of play to get it in the fairway. (If your desk is 36 inches long, measure up 3 inches on one side, imagine a line from that point to the other side's corner. That angle is about 4.4 degrees) In other words, not alot.

If the fairway is 75 yards across, you have 13.25 degrees, and increase of 50%!! I don't have time to do the statistical math, but that translates into a huge impact on accuracy. Adding 25 yards to the length of the hole has nowhere near the impact of tightening the landing area.