TIGER LOOKS SHARP, BUT HE NO LONGER SCARES OPPONENTS
Woods showed he can compete for majors, but he can’t dominate the way he once did
The last two major championships of this golf season have finally provided the answer to a question that’s been asked, repeatedly, for a long time now. Yes, Tiger Woods is back. But, also: this is about as “back” as Woods is going to get. The dominant force who once seemed a safe bet to pass Jack Nicklaus and his 18 majors? That fellow definitely isn’t coming back.
The final round of the PGA Championship at Bellerive in Missouri, as it happened, was a fairly tidy summation of why the Woods of today is miles from the Woods of the Peak Tiger years.
There was Tiger, hitting all kinds of spectacular shots, and making all kinds of putts with the club that has most often betrayed him under pressure in this comeback season, and just generally sending the crowd into a kind of delirium never seen on a golf course and making one seriously wonder if the television announcers were going to faint from excitement.
And there was the rest of the field, not much caring.
This isn’t the way it used to be. When Woods was building his legend in the decade or so of dominance that began with the 1997 Masters and ended with the 2008 U.S. Open, his arrival on the leaderboard on the weekend of a major spooked the hell out of his rivals. He would do his thing, everyone else would wilt away, and his final rounds were generally acts of coronation. Someone gave him a push now and then, but it always felt like, if he was on his game, no one could seriously challenge him. The fans knew it, and more importantly, the players knew it.
It’s been noted many times that Woods is facing a generation of players who have seen him only at his most intimidating on television, when they were just kids.
Brooks Koepka, the new PGA champion, was seven when Tiger won his first Masters.
Jon Rahm, who finished fourth on Sunday, was three in 1997.
These guys have no experience of tournament golf when Tiger Woods seizes control of a leaderboard and forces everyone else into mistakes. The mental edge that was once his greatest asset has disappeared. No one is scared of Tiger anymore.
That’s been true for a long while, but Sunday was the best evidence yet of exactly why it’s true. After Woods derailed his wild charge with a bogey on the 14th hole that looked like it ended his chances, he responded with a perfect drive off the 15th tee. It was a soaring wallop of 331 yards, giving him a short iron for his second shot on a par-4 hole that was almost 500 yards long, which he promptly stuffed close to the pin for a kick-in birdie. It was utterly reminiscent of Woods in his prime, hitting shots that were unthinkable to the average player, and with an undeniable knack for the moment.
Then along came Koepka, and he did pretty much the same thing.
The 28-year-old bombed a 333-yard drive on the 15th hole, and plunked a short iron to about nine feet, then made his birdie putt to restore a two-shot lead over Woods. He hit another perfect iron on the par-three 16th to set up another birdie, and that was that. Tiger’s Sunday charge had run out of holes.
It wasn’t just that Koepka failed to fold under pressure from Woods, but why he hadn’t folded: because he can play Tiger’s game. He can crush the driver when he needs to, and he can take an iron off the tee and hit that 280 yards when he wants to be a little more cautious.
And while it was Koepka who was doing that on Sunday for his third major win in two seasons, his game isn’t particularly unique. There are dozens of players on Tour who can do the kinds of things on a golf course that were once exclusively Tiger’s domain.
None of the preceding is to suggest Woods won’t win again. Now clearly healthy, as evidenced by the furious lashes he took out of deep rough on Sunday that must have given his various surgeons the flop sweats, he still has the game to put himself in contention.
More important than the fact that he eventually straightened out a wayward driver in that final round was that he got his putter to behave.
Once a player who could seemingly make every big putt he needed to make, Woods came into the PGA Championship tied for 106th this season in one-putt percentage on Sundays. After he made about eight miles of putts in the final round at Bellerive, he had shot up to 48th on the Tour in that metric. If, after what was essentially four lost seasons, Woods is just now getting back into tournament form, he’ll certainly be a threat at majors next season.
But that’s his ceiling now. The question was once whether Woods could get back to playing like his old self. He’s awfully close now. And yet, it still might not be enough.