Wednesday, August 30, 2000
Tiger Woods knows the difficulty of match
play
By Hunki Yun
The Orlando Sentinel
(KRT)
ORLANDO — As Tiger Woods lights up the PGA Tour, he shows
a tendency to get burned in match play. Before Tiger Woods hit
his first shot as a professional four years ago at the Greater
Milwaukee Open, he asked the world if it was ready for him.
Twenty-three wins, five majors and $19 million later, the answer,
apparently, is still no.
Woods has asserted his dominance and staked a genuine claim as
the best player ever. He has won all sorts of events and set all
kinds of records. He has been nearly unbeatable in the big events,
demoralizing the competition with runaway wins in the majors.
But there is a secret to beating Woods, and it lies in the format.
If you want to beat Woods, come closer and listen. Because here
it is: make more events match play.
While he has won nearly everything else, Woods has yet to win
a pro match-play event—and we're not counting last year's
Grand Slam of Golf, which was little more than a working vacation.
We're counting the last two World Golf Championships-Andersen
Consulting Match Play Championships, in which he lost to Darren
Clarke in the final in 2000 and to Jeff Maggert in the quarterfinal
round in 1999, and the 1998 Cisco World Match Play, which he lost
to Mark O'Meara in the final.
Not to mention his showing in the team competitions. Woods' combined
record from the 1997 and `99 Ryder Cups and the 1998 Presidents
Cup is 5-9-1.
In 72-hole stroke play, Woods has too big an advantage, because
he is that much better than everyone else. Over a period of four
days with every shot counting, Woods' talent will win out, in
much the same way the better team will win a best-of-seven series.
Even a bad day won't hurt him much, as he showed at the PGA Championship,
where he shot 70 in the third round.
But on any given day in match play, Woods can have a bad round,
or his opponent can play well. And he won't be able to recover.
That's the beauty of single elimination.
The fact is, not even Woods can play to his absurdly high standards
every day, and he certainly can't keep his opponent from getting
hot.
Sure, Woods is tough head-to-head. Just ask Bob May or Ernie Els,
who played as well as they could and still lost at the PGA Championship
and the Mercedes Championships, respectively, in playoffs.
But Woods also is vulnerable in match-play situations, as Clarke
showed. So did Hal Sutton, who defeated Woods by one stroke at
The Players Championship, in what was essentially a match-play
final round.
His loss to Sergio Garcia on Monday night in the “Battle
at Bighorn” only confirms what Woods already knows.
“Any time you're playing match play, it's more difficult
to win,” Woods said prior to this year's Andersen Consulting
Match Play, “You can go out there and shoot 8 under and lose.
Whereas, in stroke-play, you shoot 64 out here, you're looking
pretty good in the tournament. And match play, you could be gone.”
Age against the machine
For all his records, Woods still has a long way to go before he
can match Arnold Palmer's feat last week at the Senior PGA Tour's
FleetBoston Classic.
After shooting his age with a 70 in the final round of the Novell
Utah Showdown two weeks ago, Palmer bettered his age for the first
time in competition with a 69 in the second round. The score was
made possible by an eagle on the par-4 15th hole, in which Palmer
holed his second shot from 119 yards with a wedge.
“I was in the rough,” Palmer said, “and when the
ball hit short of the pin, my caddie was yelling `Go in the hole'
and it did.”
The shot was greeted by an eruption of applause for the eternal
crowd favorite.
“It shook Boston,” said Palmer, whose game seems to
be improving recently after struggling for much of the year.
He will have an even better chance of bettering his age after
he turns 71 on Sept. 10.
Hot shots
Woods has earned $14,309,406 in 1999 and 2000. That total would
place him second on the career money list, just $254,449 behind
Davis Love III, who joined the PGA Tour in 1986
. . . . Nike soon will make the Tour Accuracy ball used by Woods—the
one with the 5 percent harder core and cover—available to
the public.
(c) 2000, The Orlando Sentinel (Fla.).
Visit the Sentinel on the World Wide Web at http://www.orlandosentinel.com/.
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Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.
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