Bo has created a new disorder all by himself. Accordingly it should be named after him.

It shall known as BBSCS - Bo's Bitter Scolded Child Syndrome

It's really not an easy thing to do. You usually need a war or a mother in need of bashing her child to create such reactions.

First meetings will be hosted by AA-rods cousin.

are people talking about that? For most of his career, Tiger has been elite with every club except the driver. JN was elite with the driver and long irons, closer to avg with his shorter clubs and a good putter.

Have young Jack tee off on par 4s and 5s, and let Tiger play in from there and you prob get 25+ majors.

fwiw when saying "show me the numbers" with regards to driving, it's pretty dumb. driving distance was recorded on 2 holes for a long time, and the player may not have hit driver, when it was even recorded at all.


the new radar stats are awesome though.

I don't know if the clubhead speed stat is only recorded on driver shots, but it looks that way. Tiger's avg is 121mph with his slowest 118 and his fastest 125, and there's no way he's swinging 118 with a 3wood.

I tried to find the 1968 IBM stats in full/list form but couldn't. Anyone have a link?

searched for it as well, full data doesn't exist i dont think

It's still done this way.

The driving distance stat is a joke...it IS recorded on two holes and a player uses a 3 wood or a 3 iron o well too bad for them...not to mention wind conditions vary from morning to afternoon

The entire discussion about who hit it longer off the tee is for people missing the big picture. Tiger and JN both can murder the ball if they want to and no course they played would ever be too long for one and a pitch and putt for the other if they had the same clubs and balls. Tiger has always taken steps including altering his driver to be drastically shorter with a firmer shaft than compared to the average tour player. If his focus was just hitting it far he could be hitting it a lot further, but again that does not even matter they both do need to hit it further.

Tigers short game at pretty much every point in his career dominates JN's. Obviously JN's wasn't bad by any means just Tigers is one of the best of all time top 10 for sure and if your counting players who have won 5 majors or more he is the best with the exception of Seve Ballesteros

Well time to pipe in as a Tiger Disliker.

His year has to be ruled a success with three wins and were not done yet. Though in Tiger's standards it is a fail with no Majors.

My question to the Tiger Lovers. With his failure to close on the weekend how do you rate his year and chances next year of winning a major.

I have to also give him credit last few months for not being the ultimate prick to the press and in general. |I hope his comment about being to relaxed on Saturday doesnt change the latter

I am a huge Tiger fan, but i am more of a "see something awesome fan" and seeing him break Jack's record for major wins would be pretty awesome. I am also about the same age as Tiger so I have been watching him and aging with him; I think watching him fail has some added "you're old" punch to it that makes it suck a little extra. Young Tiger doesn't lose when he had leads. He just didn't. Current Tiger.... does. Watching him lose sucks the same way that watching [insert name of team sport from your local home town area] lose sucks.

i like watching tiger more for his skills on the golf course than his image off the course but i'll chime in as a tiger lover.

i actually gained more respect for tiger after the scandal than before. not for the infidelity part so much (banging hookers can go either way though) but for the fact that he seems more human with vices like normal people, who doesnt believe he needs to whore himself out at every media opportunity because he has a gift at hitting a small ball. <flame away!

anyways it is a successfull year if you believe he is still in the process and a lot more is to come. he still seems like he doesnt own the swing yet. especially in pressure situations. as he gets more familiar with the swing, he will get more feel for distance control with wedge shots, pitches and chips. in addition as he gets more confidence in his ability to repeat the swing on command, he can allocate more time on putting practice. anyone who has played a lot of golf prior to a major swing change, knows your touch around the greens is the first thing to go in your game, because of more time spent on new swing practice.

Obviously a successful year. I predicted 3 wins with 1 major at the beginning of the year. Bah at no major, but not a huge deal. I think he will win at least 1 more time this year, either in the playoffs or around the world after the Tour Championship.

Seems to be getting more and more comfortable with his swing. It definitely falls off a bit when in contention at majors, but as he says all the time with swing changes there is a progression.

Range at home->Course at home->Range/Practice rounds on Tour->Tournaments on Tour->
In contention in Tournaments->Majors->Contending for majors

He appears to be on the last step. Just doesn't appear completely comfortable with his game when the majors are up for grabs, despite his game getting around major venues just fine the first couple days. I'm sure he feels it a little bit more, as evidenced by him closing the deal well in normal events but not at the majors. The first one will be the toughest for sure and you could definitely argue that he's probably "trying" to hard much like at the 2006 Masters when he knew it would be his dad's last chance to see him win a major.

There is definitely room for improvement in the short iron department even just by Tour standards, not to mention his standards as someone who used to be one of the best. Putting is coming along though still streaky. If as time goes on and there is little to no improvement in his short iron play, say middle of next year then I think we fans can start to get a bit worried.

Overall tons of positives to take from the year so far. He's well aware of what areas of his game are the weakest and I'm sure he will target them as he feels more and more comfortable with not having to devote all of his practice time to the full swing. Fully expect next year to be better than this year.

And, sure it is the biggest major drought of his career but the numbers lie a little bit there. Yes it has been 14 majors, 4 more than the 2 10 major droughts hes had previously but the circumstances are tad different.

1) Personal life meltdown(big blow to his chances at 2010 Masters)
2) Injuries(didn't play in 2011 USO or Open and basically unprepared for 2011 PGA)
3) After every other swing change Tiger didn't win until his 11th major with that swing.

At best this was his 7th major with the Foley swing and that is counting the 2010 PGA Champ where they started working together the week before. Remove that, now your down to 6 real starts, and you can basically take out the 2011 PGA and now you are looking at 5 "real" major starts under Foley.

Those 5 starts:
T4
T40
T21
T3
T11

Looks pretty good to me. Looks just slightly worse than his finishes leading up to 99 PGA

3
T10
T18
T3
T7

And better than the finishes leading up to the 2005 Masters

T39
T22
T17
T9
T24

HANG IT UP TIGER. YOURE DONE

NOT

NEXT YEAR GONNA BE FUN

I put his odds of winning a major next year at better than 50%.

Despite the weekend issues, his game has been improving like crazy this year. If he continues to improve and stays healthy there's no reason why he shouldn't be a major factor in the majors next year, even if he isn't as dominant as he has been in the past.

it's too bad his sucky driving and wedge play is a product of his swing and not voodoo magic. He's got such massive shaft lean and negative AoA that every shot he hits is a stinger. It's great for hitting 250 yard 4 irons and 200 yard 8 irons but not much else.

sucky driving?

I just lol everytime someone says that nowadays. And lol at every shot is a stinger, Tiger probably has more control over trajectory than everyone out on tour right now aside from with his wedges. Not like he's handcuffed to only leaning the shaft and hitting it low.

As for his wedges, I'm sure he will fix it. He uses TrackMan a lot and him and Sean will be able to tackle the problem with his #s.

If it's so easy, why wouldn't he have fixed his wedges before now? Just maybe the technique that leads to 200 yard 8 irons makes wedge distance control a lot tougher.


As for sucky driving, his fear of the driver speaks for itself. Yeah he's great at hitting irons in play off the tee, but with driver in hand he's pretty average.

I don't know why he hasn't fixed the wedges yet. Tho I think there has been marginal improvement over the year. He actually hit a few decent ones this week. I agree the technique is different and like I said, if they aren't really cleaned up by next year then I think fans can worry about what is going on. It's not really that big of a change.

And measuring his performance with the driver is obviously impossible, sure he doesn't pull it as often as just about any other player but when he does it has been mostly decent all year. Not a lot of gigantic misses like in the past. He hit some squirrely ones on the weekend but Thursday and Friday I think he was something like 8/10 fairways when he pulled driver. Bottom line is he's 4th in Total Driving this year, who cares what club he uses. When you hit your irons like he does, I'm sure he's fine giving up a little distance to find the fairway because he is so good.

Approaches from 150-175- Average 26' Rank 20th
Approaches from 175-200- Average 29' Rank 1st
Approaches from 200-225- Average 35' Rank 9th

He's obviously the best by far with all clubs from 3 wood to 9 iron.

I don't think he has as much control over trajectory as you think. If he did, he wouldn't be so mediocre in driving efficiency. He launches his driver low with moderately high spin, just like every other club in his bag.

Maybe he will get his wedge game back. Who knows but his new swing is not perfect for distance control.

Yes his driving #'s aren't great but I'm quite sure that is by choice. He has experimented in the past with a positive AoA into the driver for a higher launch with less spin and more distance but he didn't like the difference. He felt like he was hitting it too far with too little control. He also wasn't able to work the ball as much as he would like.

And yes he is the best in the world hands down from 3wd-9iron and that is huge, as the data has proven that the shots over 100 yards is where Tiger picks up the majority of his strokes on the field.

If he dials in the wedges it will be fun to watch. Of course everybody is like, we'll never see dominant Tiger again but I think it's closer than most people are willing to admit. Yes, he may never get back to 99-00 where he had 17 wins in 42 starts including 3 majors but he has 3 pretty good wins this year, had the lead at one point in every major this year except the Masters, and is leading the Tour in scoring average. All while being near the bottom in wedge play, a category he used to dominate, and having a putter that is just now starting to cooperate a little better. It may not be 99-00 but those aren't the only years he dominated the Tour. If he sneaks in a win during the playoffs that will be 4 wins, and besides Tiger the only people to do that since 2000 are DLIII(1), Phil(1), and Vijay(2). Looks pretty dominant to me.

That's basically my point. He loves mashing down on the ball with every club in the bag. Elite driver and wedge play require something different and he hasn't been able to adjust with his new swing.

it's totally insane to me that tiger has this insatiable drive for more and more distance on his irons, but is "meh" on increasing his driving distance by 15+ yards.

He could just lessen his AoA through the bag and hit his irons 10 yards less and his driver 15 yards more.

You must be a smart guy golf-wise to know more about Tiger's swing than him or Sean Foley

1) do you think TW/Foley know this?
2) do you think there might be reasons for it? Similar to TW playing what is widely thought to be the highest spinning ball on Tour?

http://sports.yahoo.com/news/golf--p...r-problem.html

Does anyone else find this article funny? I think its hilarious that the writer things Mcilroy is the only one standing in Tigers way. Id love to see them both playing their best though and see who comes out on top though. In general I think the article is laughable.


Flame away guys cuz I know its coming

When did I claim this? Knowing something and doing something are completely different. Again, Tiger swings this way because he likes to.


1) yes I think they know this. Tiger loves the feeling of "compression" that he gets from mashing down on the ball with very low dynamic loft. This is a hard way to hit driver and wedge.

2) Tiger is bringing so little dynamic loft into the ball that he needs a higher spin ball. Or maybe he is bringing in low dynamic loft because of the high spin ball. Who knows



Rory just lapped the field while hitting way up on the driver and launching high iron shots. The opposite of Tiger's "compression." There are multiple ways to get it done, and Tiger likes doing it his way. But his shaky driver and wedge play are not voodoo magic, they are results of his attack into the ball.

awesome sticky