Friday, August 17, 2001
What happened to Tiger?
By Marla Ridenour
Knight Ridder Newspapers
(KRT)
DULUTH, GA. — Mystery? What mystery?
Recent references to Tiger Woods’ “mysterious slump”
seem overly dramatic. When the world’s greatest golfer
finishes out of the top 10 in four straight tournaments, analysts
can’t restrain themselves. When he shoots a 3-over-par
73 as he did Thursday in the PGA Championship, it fuels the fire.
The speculation on what’s wrong with Woods seems somewhat
farfetched. Is he overextending himself in his
business interests? Has he been going on too many fishing trips?
If Woods knows the answer, he’s not saying. He just repeats,
“I’m not that far off,” as he did again Thursday
after the first round. But Woods’ peers say Woods is experiencing
a letdown after winning the Masters to complete
his own personal Grand Slam of four straight majors over two years.
Woods’ slide didn’t begin until after he ran away
with the Memorial Tournament in Dublin June 3. But his three
outings after the Masters — the Byron Nelson (tie for third),
the Deutsche Bank-SAP Open in Germany (win) and the
Memorial — can be attributed to afterglow. Close friend David
Duval, who played with Woods on Thursday, said as
much.
“If it was me, my biggest goal this year would have been
to win the Masters and to get that fourth in a row and
then you could argue whether it’s a Grand Slam or not,”
Duval said. “I think that takes a lot out of you. I can now
tell
you from experience it just beats you up, it really wears you
out and you’ve got to get away at times.
“With such a spotlight that he’s had and then pulling
off the win at Augusta, don’t get me wrong, I’m not
saying
that I think he was not concerned with playing well the rest of
the year. But I think that was really his biggest focus and
it took a lot out of him.”
Ryder Cup captain and ABC analyst Curtis Strange suggested
the same thing.
“You have to have some kind of letdown sometime, don’t
you, when you’ve reached some impossible goal?”
Strange said. “It’s tough to keep going and keep going
and keep going time and time again. Once in a while you have
to sit back and take a deep breath. I don’t care how old
he is. I think being so young, he’ll come back much faster.
It
shows you how much we expect out of him when he doesn’t win
three or four times and all of a sudden it’s another
slump.”
Fans and foes are not used to Woods being human. Ties for
12th at the U.S. Open and for 25th at the British
Open, Woods’ last event, are so un-Tigerlike. But Thursday,
when describing double-bogeys at the par-4 No. 3 and
the par-3 No. 15, Woods sounded like a common duffer.
“I hit a perfect drive, had a 9-iron in my hands and
just yipped it left,” he said of No. 3. “I tried to
shape one in
there but didn’t start it right.” Of No. 15, he said:
“I pulled a 3-iron left and got a horrible lie in the rough.
It was sitting
down so bad that I thought it was embedded, but they said it bounced
in there. I tried to get real steep on it, hit it thin
and put it in the water.”
He added to his problems with three-putt bogeys at Nos. 9
and 14. All of this was vintage Tiger, at least the
Tiger of his last five tournaments. In that span, he’s shot
a combined 12 over par in the first round.
“I started off not hitting the ball very well, but I
was able to get around,” said Woods, who teed off at No.
10.
“Then I started hitting it pretty good, but couldn’t
make any putts.”
When Woods won nine tournaments in 2000, people wondered what
would happen if he lost his incredible focus
and motivation. Perhaps that’s what we’re seeing now.
Of the 75 players who teed off Thursday morning, 35 broke
par and Woods was not among them.
But there seems little cause for alarm. He’s only 25,
and he’s won six majors. He’s not injured, at least
not that
anyone knows. His rivals are not resting easy. No one is celebrating.
If anything, the world might be gaining a greater
appreciation for what Woods has accomplished.
“Maybe (his) ball is getting into the rough a couple
more times than it did a year ago and we all know you can’t
play out of the rough in these events,” Duval said. “A
couple of the putts might not be going in. It’s just golf.
The guy is
in a tough spot because he’s not winning every week, he’s
getting crucified.
“It’s a very tough game to stay on top of for years
and years at a time. Most everybody goes through spurts. We
expect his spurts of greatness to last longer than other people’s.
But he’s going to have down times, too. He’ll fight
back.”
———
© 2001, Akron Beacon Journal (Akron, Ohio).
Visit Akron Beacon Journal Online at http://www.ohio.com/.
Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.
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