A major message by Tiger at Doral
By RON SIRAK AP Golf Writer
MIAMI (AP) - How good is Tiger Woods this year?
He is this good:
Woods hit two balls into the water on Sunday at the Doral-Ryder
Open.
He played the four par-5 holes on the Blue Monster - holes
he is supposed to dominate - 1 over par in the final round.
He hit indifferent iron shots, imperfect drives and imprecise
putts.
Yet he was still in contention with two holes to play and finished
in ninth place - his worst finish of the year.
"Tiger is playing better this year than he did at any
time last year," his coach Butch Harmon said. "He is
more consistent, more patient, and that all comes from being more
mature."
Golf, Nick Faldo likes to say, is not about the quality of
one's good shots, it is about the quality of one's bad shots.
Woods' bad shots are much better this year.
Sometimes it is easy to lose sight of the fact that he is barely
22 years old. Sometimes it is easy to lose sight of the fact that
he is so good that a ninth-place finish is viewed as dismal failure.
Woods started the final round at Doral three strokes behind
Michael Bradley, the eventual winner, and didn't get his game
in gear until it was too late, managing only two birdie putts
inside 35 feet on the front nine.
But he made a run down the stretch with birdies on Nos. 14
and 16 to get to 7 under par before closing with a double bogey
on the final hole when he hit into the water.
Woods, who closed with a 73 for a 283, added the ninth-place
finish to the two seconds and a third on the PGA Tour this year.
In his only stop overseas - the Johnnie Walker Classic in Thailand
- he won.
The five strokes by which Woods trailed Bradley is more than
the total number of strokes by which he trailed in his other three
completed PGA Tour events this year.
"Tiger has worked very hard over the off season,"
Harmon said. "He has worked on sand shots, chip shots and
on developing a variety of different spins on wedge shots."
Woods has six victories in 33 starts since joining the PGA
Tour in August 1996 and won the Masters by a record 12 strokes
last year. Yet, after winning four times in the first six months
of 1997, he has gone winless since.
If he had putted reasonably well at Doral that winless streak
would have ended over the weekend. A glaring difference between
Woods and Jack Nicklaus is that Nicklaus was the best short putter
in the history of the game, virtually never missing a 4- to 8-foot
putt that mattered.
It was exactly from that distance that Woods was erratic at
Doral, a distance that has given him trouble throughout his career
- except last year at Augusta, where he did not have a three-putt
green.
"He was picking up the putter too quick," Harmon
said. "We worked on taking it back lower."
If Woods lacks Nicklaus' consistent putting touch from in close,
he does share something critical with the Golden Bear.
Woods wants to win the majors.
"I can't wait until April," he said.
The fans feel the same way.
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