You could also make an argument for whatever event is on the same weekend of the British Open.

Pretty sure the alternate field events that square off with WGC event and the majors are easier to win than the match play or even the 30 man Tour Championship. Beating 125 guys who are the 50th to 300th best players and no great players has to be easier than beating 30 of the top 50ish players in the world.

Field from Puerto Rico Open was Jordan Spieth, 10 guys you've heard of that are ok golfers, 10 guys who were good 5-15 years ago, and John Daly (http://www.pgatour.com/tournaments/p...aderboard.html)

The Sanderson Farms Championship is even weaker and I would bet on Tiger vs. the field from that tournament in every single tournament of the year even if everyone from this tournament got to play (http://www.pgatour.com/tournaments/s...p/results.html)

The Reno-Tahoe Open field also sucks a lot and all you have to do is make a couple eagles to get way ahead (http://www.pgatour.com/tournaments/r...n/results.html)

Also, if you wanna lol at small fields then the Hyundai Tournament of Champions should be your go to since its as few guys as any and some of them aren't as good as the players at the Tour Championship.

Common fallacy which just isn't true. This isn't women's tennis where #100 has a .01% chance of beating a top 10 player, in men's golf #100 beats a top 10 player over 40% of the time.

And FWIW, just because you hadn't heard of most of the Puerto Rico field (or the others) doesn't mean they weren't name players or players others hadn't heard of. It was a solid field.

I said top 1 not top 10. Right now Tiger Woods is ranked #1 and Kevin Chappell is ranked #100. I will lay my $150 to your $100 on Tiger finishing higher in the next event they both play (40% would be your breakeven). If you would prefer to use Tiger vs. whatever the closest guy to 100 is in every event Tiger plays then we could do that too.

Also, it wasn't a solid field. If you think field size matters that much then how is the Hyundai Tournament of Champions not the easiest event to win. What if Tiger played in the NCAA where there is a much bigger field to navigate? Would he not beat the inferior competition at a higher clip?

also, while you can play a lot worse and still win a match play event due to getting a good draw that doesn't make it even slightly easier to win, it just means that you may not have to be the best player that tournament to win.

Can we please contain the "People asking BO to put his money where his mouth is" discussions to the Golf Forum AIDS threads and not let it pollute over here?

So what are we saying at this point?

Tiger is just gagging in the Majors but is fine on the other tournaments?

I don't think anyone here can argue he is feeling the pressure of trying to win that major. It is clearly playing on his mind and affecting his game when competing in those 4 tournaments.

Do you also make that determination for regular events, 4 at a time?

Without his A-game he's had a chance to win a major or two this year. If he's heathly and we're in this same spot a few years from now I'll buy that. Until then I'll give him time to build a meaningful sample size.

Isn't this pretty obvious? The fact that he does well on other tournaments (he's won 8 times on the PGA the last 2 years. No one else has won more than 4) shows that his physical game is back at near Tiger's old peak. Just seems that he puts too much pressure on himself for majors.

You could argue that he's just not good at certain courses (e.g., he's never done well at Oak Hill), but that's not applicable at the Masters.

Wait. I keep seeing you bring this up. Interested to learn when you will decide that he is healthy enough so you can begin to judge his performances in the 4 biggest tournaments of the year?

I know people want to believe Majors are really no different than the regular events because there is nothing statistically or down on paper to suggest otherwise but if you stop kidding yourselves for a second and just accept that they ARE different and will always be different whether you think it or not.

Considering how mental the game of golf is, majors being more important becomes a self fufilling prophecy. You know it takes more stomach and balls to play the last round of the Masters well while in contention than some random tourney just because you know how big of a stage it is.

I think I'd say that Tiger is probably the best player in the world at this point, people that aren't really fans of him are likely overestimating how much of it is his lack of WIM/mental toughness/the pressures getting to him, and underestimating the amount of variance involved due to the small number of majors(compared to non majors)+the smaller edge that exists for the top players in golf relative to some other individual sports.

He's healthy enough now. And he's finished with the major swing changes early last year iirc. During the process of changing his swing he wasn't able to practice his short game as much as he needs to.

This is his first full year back after having a full offseason to devote to practicing all facets of his game.

So yeah, the clock is ticking.

I don't foresee any major swing changes over the next few years because of his age and the fact that he wants to catch Jack and needs to get crackin. The only thing that will "reset" this clock is an injury and hopefully that doesn't happen.

(And I haven't involved myself in this talk about what's a major and what counts more or whatever so your last bit doesn't apply to me.)

To me he lost about 2-3 years due to injuries and scandal and another year to swing changes. Though he is playing better he is no where near as dominate as when he was younger.

I don't really think it is as much pressure as the fact that when he was younger he had an incredible advantage off the tee. He was able to hit from areas that no one in the field was able to reach. The talk at the time was about Tiger proofing the courses, ie forcing players to play approach shots from the same spot on the course. Now he hits from the same spot or even behind most of those in the field.

One he has not been able to consistantly control his driver for several years. Hank Haney in his book pretty much discribed it as yips with the driver. Which problem becomes worse or more costly in majors when the fairways are narrower and the rough is deeper. His confidence is such he only pulls out the driver when it is absolutely necessary. Which forces him to play back behind a lot of the other players who are not afraid to hit their driver.

Two the improvement of equipment has increased the distance of the other tour players. Which has leveled the playing field, not to mention there are several of the bombers who hit the ball farther.

Isn't the whole reason we have a golf forum to contain the nitBO superaids?

tiger is still the best golfer around but isn't dominating like he used to, used to be pretty much evens to win every event and now is more like 8/1. was nicklaus ever in the same position or did he pwn from the start of his career to the finish?

goatness has to be measured relative to their competition imo or the best player right now is always going to be 'goat'

He's entered 7 stroke play, non-major PGA events this year. He's won 5 of them. He has a substantial lead in money and is over a stroke ahead of the nearest guy in scoring average. If Adam Scott had a year like this, people would be calling him the next Tiger. Tiger does this and it's called an off-year.
Through 2005, he was always in the top 10 in driving distance (except once, when he was 11th). This year he's 44th.

If a match was 72 holes you would have a point. however ...

If Adam Scott had Tiger's year people would be questioning his mental ability to win the important tournaments.

Wow this is good - with how lol the Tiger fanboys are, I totes get why you can't resist troalling itt

I was scratching my head at this, so I did some poking around. The only really objective measure of field strength that I could find was the one used in the World Golf Ranking. Using just the World Rank factor and ignoring the Home Tour factor, in 2011, the four majors had the strongest fields of all the tournaments (PGA, British, Masters, US, in that order). The Bridgestone and WGC Match Play were next, followed by the Players, Doral, the first three FedEx Cup tournaments, WGC-HSBC, Riviera, the Memorial and Wentworth.

All that to say that yes, Tiger won some big tournaments (and may yet win some more) and had a great year, but the four majors are still the biggest and the hardest ones to win, and he did strike out at those.

Tough to determine this, since during the time I've been following golf, no one other than Tiger has won 5+ tournaments in a year without winning a major in that same year.

I doubt anyone would be coming down on Scott in this hypothetical, though.

That's an alternate field event, as are a couple of others during the year (Mayakoba, etc), which has a weak field, but is still tougher to win because it is a full 144 or 156 player event.

Many players in the alternate field events have played competitively on Tour for quite awhile and won significant tournaments, even majors.

God I love WIM arguments. Tiger is goes a decade being the most cold-blooded, clutchest, ruthless athlete maybe in the history of sports, crushing his opponents as they wilt under the spotlight and he remains calm in any situation.

Then he doesnt win a major for a few years (despite continuing to crush), and the narrative instantly shifts to "He just doesnt have that killer instinct anymore, he is just putting too much pressure on himself."

What a joke. Yet again another example of how "clutch" is just a way of describing a trend you just saw, and has no predictive value (or value period) whatsoever.

If it wasnt for the Elin thing, how exactly would all of you be explaining this dramatic shift in the very makeup of Tigers personality?

Majors have a fixed point ranking that isn't subject to the formula used for most other events. There are a couple of other big events on each Tour that get fixed points as well. So majors, while worth more OWGR points, aren't actually the strongest fields.

Immediately preceding the personal blowup, TW lost his first (and only) final round lead in a major at the PGA.

And that's the argument. Like a hitter getting beaned in the face that never quite recovers, there is some possibility that losing the PGA/personal disaster fundamentally changed his makeup, killed his aura of invincibility, etc etc.