Thayers talking about the Casey tournament.

The only reason I watched any golf the past two Sundays was to see how Tiger's doing. Other than that, couldn't care less about some random tournament and who among the guys who won't ever win 14 majors will win it, I suspect there are a lot of people like this.

What you're doing is gatekeeping and being mad that people are excited about the wrong thing, who cares? Like I watched the nonsense that was Mayweather-Conor and had a great time but I'm sure you enjoyed yourself just as well to the tune of the great fundamentals displayed over at NCAA wrestling or some ****.

Bumped for ya Cnasty.

I understand the difficulty in forming testable hypotheses in these situations, but an unwillingness to speculate until after something happens speaks more to your subjectivity and being results oriented than anything else. You claim a better than average rusty -1 with only 1 bogey is blowing it while alluding to his mental fragility. Wichita essentially thinks a guy shooting 65 is proof Tiger can't win. Woody Woodersons, etc. Try to at least apply some rationality to your positions.

I care. I watch golf every week whether Tiger is in it or not and the events he plays are far less enjoyable to watch because it completely ruins the quality of the coverage.

I couldnt care less whether you watch or not.

I think the main point is the television station already knows you are going to watch no matter what. The station wants the five casuals for every one of you to watch and thus they will show Tiger non-stop. You will be salty about it but you will still watch.

yet you're ducking the match play this week even though tiger isn't playing...

fwiw tiger's final round at valspar wasn't very good, despite the score being not bad

he had some big par saves and not really many great chances to score

his iron approaches were way off from the rest of his rounds there

guess thayer jus checks box scores in goalf too

Apparently gaining 2 strokes vs the field Tee to Green then running poorly on the greens is not that good.

Let me put that in my notes.

Tiger outscored his pairing and the final group by 17! strokes at Valspar on Sunday. Casey posted a number that no one could catch.

BRACKET for this week's WGC match play being drawn live on the golf channel right now

I suggest all the Tiger haters tune in since Tiger isn't in the field and its a sick event.

That despite the fact that Casey wasn't the only one to shoot 65 on the final round, and that of the top ~40 Tiger's round was right around the average (and below average for the top ~15). It was definitely not possible for anyone to catch Casey though

I don't really lean much in either direction on this argument - I don't particularly like Tiger but can't deny golf is far more interesting when he's around - but this is one of the worst pieces of deliberately misrepresenting statistics I've seen (outside of politics) in a long time.

It seems like you're saying his longer game was a bit off on Sunday yet he showed pretty good mental toughness in achieving his big par saves and long putts. Seems like a reasonable take and something a top golfer with good mental toughness would be prone to do.


Not that it's a brag or anything but I've clearly watched way more NBA and Tiger than you or pretty much anyone else alive, so your continuous boxscore bit makes you look pretty silly

You guys keep making my point for me.

The fact that Casey and Rory ran away with it and there was nothing Tiger could do is why Tiger being BACK isnt that big of a deal. In this current era hes not special. There are lots of great golfers*


*relatively. Theyre all objectively terrible at golf bc golf is hard

An objectively terrible footnote.

Exactly this. Those of you guys carrying water for Tiger's final round at Valspar either didn't watch it or are just grasping for why itsfineiraqadvisor.meme

I think a testable hypothesis for mental toughness for a golfer would be scoring average from Thurs-Fri vs. the weekends in majors which are clearly highest pressure. Might need to be shots above/below field average for first two rounds vs. last two to really see as conditions tend to be quite variable in majors sometimes. We see no namers get close to the top all the time after Thurs-Fri and fade away on the weekend. The same happens to some extent in regular PGA events but not as much. Very few no-namers win majors while there are many each year who win PGA events.

My guess on Tiger's rating in this stat would be
1999-2008 -10/10
2009-2018 -2/10

I have all the relevent rounds just about for 2009-2018 already posted in the thread a page back and there is a wiki page with all of Tigers rounds in the majors year by year so should be easy to figure out.


Also to clarify I think Tiger absolutely can win. I think right now the only thing holding him back from doing exactly that is his mind. His swing and body look good. His short game looks good. What has been missing is the ability to execute on Sunday when it has really mattered. It is a small sample size so maybe he just ran bad. My point is that it is all a part of a bigger problem that he has clearly had since the hydrant. In higher pressure spots he has not performed well overall for a long time. That and there is clear evidence of mental issues (chipping and to a lesser extent his putting) a couple years back so there can be no doubt that this stuff is rattling around in his brain somewhere.

I think some of you guys forget Tiger is human. He has been through a terrible last 10 years with tons of negative media scrutiny. It would be very hard to go through that and not have a lot of mental scarring. This can manifest itself on the golf course in strange ways.

Oh yes when people thought Tiger had the yips. What a great narrative for the "this is all mental slappies."

You would think that if one held the opinion that his chipping issues were entirely mental and he was a shell of his former self, then when he showed up this year with a razor sharp short game those people would reassess their diagnosis.

Elite short game -> terrible short game = mental issues
terrible short game -> elite short game = no improvement in his mental issues

In reality, Tiger admitted that chipping/putting was the most painful thing to do when he was dealing with back issues. This makes sense as bending over for a long time hitting chips/pitches for healthy people is a pain in the ass. He probably was unable to practice it as much as he would have liked and as a result, combined with the pain, it was horrendous.

This leads to my opinion that the strength of his short game is the best indicator wrt his health that we've seen in a long time. He has likely been able to spend tons of time chipping/putting to have his short game where it currently is and he would not be able to do that without his back feeling extremely healthy.

You seem to be attributing this to the mysterious mental fragility as well while it's standard regression to the mean over a larger sample. You are biased since leaderboards don't get sorted by just Sat+Sun alone and a lot of no namers who could tear it up have been cut.

Even then, guys who indeed do get shook are what, less than a stroke worse on Sundays? Imagining that a (close to a) billionaire in his forties starts trembling from pressure while is mr cool on Fridays with 20 cameras on him is just lol. Just makes more sense that even if your premise is true, it's because the guy whose body is breaking down is worse with 3 days behind him.

All this Tiger lost his mental toughness is nonsense. Tiger probably wasn't any more mentally tough in his prime than he is now. He was just better at golf than he is now, and his competition is probably tougher now than it was then. So even if he's BACK (he is), he'll won't be as good as he was in his peak, and since his competition is tougher he won't win nearly as much. Just a combination of Tiger being a little worse and everyone else being a little better. But if he's good enough to finish as he did in the last two tournaments, he'll win some of them in the coming years. Maybe even a few majors, who knows.

It is one piece of evidence. There are lots of other pieces of evidence. It would also make sense if Tiger had the yips to make whatever excuses he needed to explain it as well (I was in too much pain to practice) rather than just coming out and saying he had the yips. Pretty much no one admits that until their career is completely over.

I do agree with you that the strength of his short game is evidence that he has been able to practice a lot which is a great sign for his physical health. I also think it is a good sign for his mental health as well.

I honestly think that once Tiger gets over the hump and wins something that the floodgates will open and the mental issues he has struggled with will be a thing of the past. We just haven't seen that yet.

Also if you don't think he has had mental issues what do you attribute his major record since 2009? All variance? It's hard to think it is anything else than mental when he was good enough many of those years to get up near the lead through Friday only to fade away time after time.

Go look at basically every masters leaderboard ever. There are always guys near the lead through Friday/Saturday who suddenly shoot 75-80 on the weekend when the pressure is on. (See Hoffman, Charley and Fowler, Rickie last year for example). So it is far worse than a 1 stroke difference.

This is a problem with framing. Its impossible to play terribly on Thursday and Friday and then well on Saturday and Sunday because you can't make the cut by playing terribly during the week.

However, top players still do have terrible rounds on Thursday or Friday from time to time.

Also, the weekend scoring average is better relative to the difficulty of conditions because the worse players don't make the cut. You think a field with 55 guys playing well scores lower or one with 90 golfers including a bunch of amateurs and guys over 50?

And in the 2010 Deutche Bank Championship, Charley Hoffman was 4 strokes behind after Saturday and hit a 62 to win it when the pressure was on.

Its almost like no golfer plays their A+ game every single round...

Looking to get 4 or 8 people for a DRAFT for matchplay.

There are 64 players in the field, looking to snake draft. Whoever picks the winner wins. WTA.

Would do 50 and/or 100.


8 x 100 would be sick